Light dims on Pa Oladele, Pioneer Filmmaker

By Shaibu Husseini

Late Pa Francis Oladele

The Nigerian motion picture industry has been thrown into deep mourning again. The industry was still mourning the untimely demise of veteran actor and social crusader Femi Robinson who passed on May 20 and was interred on June 12, 2015 in Lagos when news broke that a pioneer of the Nigerian Film Industry, a former newspaper columnist, photo journalist and the first Nigerian to Head the Film Unit of the defunct Western Nigeria Television in Ibadan Pa Francis Oladele had died after a brief illness. Pa Oladele who produced ‘Kongi Harvest’, the first film that is recorded in Nigeria history as the first full length feature film to be produced in Nigeria was aged 82 and would have been 83 years this August. Ironically the late Femi Robinson who died at 75 featured as an actor in ‘Kongi’s Harvest’, which Pa Oladele produced in 1970.

Late Chief Femi Robbinson who died last month in Lagos.  He starred in the 1970 production of Kongi Harvest. 

The news of the death of the pioneer filmmaker was made public by his close associate ace filmmaker Tunde Kelani on his facebook page. The terse facebook message read: Sadly, we lost one of the greatest pioneers of the Nigerian Film industry, our uncle Francis Oladele who produced Kongi's Harvest with Prof Wole Soyinka in 1969, passed early this morning. Kongi's Harvest is the first indigenous film in Nigeria. I remember when I visited him in 2013 to re-present his i-Rep award; he was very cheerful and charming. Full of anecdotes as he conducted us round his rich library and wooded compound, ending the tour with his prepared grave of more than fifteen years, right by his late wife's grave. Incidentally, Femi Robinson (Village Headmaster) who acted in Kongi's Harvest was buried in Lagos last week. May their gentle and creative souls rest in peace’’

When Ace Filmmaker visited Pa Oladele in his Oyo home last year

Tributes flowed freely for the master filmmaker who passed on in his hometown Oyo minutes after Kelani hit the send button. Although the cause of his death was yet to be ascertained, a close family source simply said that the octogenarian filmmaker died ‘after a brief illness’. .

Born to Oyo parentage and christened Francis Adetunji, Pa Oladele started out as a photographer and later as a photojournalist with the Daily Times. He left for the United States in 1955 where he studied photography at the New York Institute of Photography. He worked briefly with Technicolor (USA) before returning to Nigeria to work as the first Nigerian or African Head of the Film Unit of the then Western Nigeria Television (WNTV). He later resigned in 1965 as soon as he was done setting up his production company---Calpenny-Nigeria Films Limited. He also set up an artiste rendezvous in Ibadan called Kongi Club at Adamasingba which became a rallying point for artistes especially artistes of the University of Ibadan acting company.

Clearly a pioneer of the film industry in Nigeria and a master of adapting literature to film, Pa Oladele’s was the producer of the first indigenous film in Nigeria, which was a screen adaptation of Prof. Wole Soyinka‘s play titled Kongi’s Harvest.  Produced in 1970 and directed by the Afro-American director Ossie Davis, Kongi Harvest is based on Wole Soyinka’s dramatic epic of the same title. Shot on location in Nigeria with a rich Nigerian cast and a mixed technical crew of foreigners and Nigerians. Oladele’s next big production credit apart from several documentaries that he produced was the 1971 production of Things Fall Apart, which is also based on an amalgam of Chinua Achebe’s novels-- Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease. But it was conveniently shot under the title Bullfrog in the Sun due to the raging civil war then. His last major effort as a filmmaker was the production of the 1988 big budget film project ‘Eye of Life’. However ‘Eye of Life’ couldn’t be released because of the collapse of the economy, which brought about the devaluation of the Naira. His documentary credit includes Ballard Dubar, Meet Olu and a documentary on the late Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed, sponsored by the United Nations.

A source of inspiration to the second generation of filmmakers in Nigeria, Pa Oladele would be remembered as a pioneer of the industry that has a name carved on gold, being the first Nigerian to go into film production.