Soyinka meets Ake film’s cast & crew

It was a bright and beautiful afternoon in Lagos last week as Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, met with the adult cast and crew for the feature film adaptation of his childhood memoir, Ake: the Years of Childhood, being produced by a Lagos-based production house, Back Page Productions.

The meeting was hilarious, thought-provoking as well as inspiring as the Professor and the lead cast and crew exchanged views and pleasantries.
In attendance were leading lights of the Nigerian movie industry. They include Taiwo; Akin Lewis, Tina Mba, Ben Tomoloju, Yinka Davies, Tony Umole, Yeni Kuti, Jimi Solanke, Jahman Anikulapo, Beautiful Nubia etc.
Also there were the film’s top crew that include Dapo Adeniyi, the Executive Producer, Yemi Akintokun, the Director, Ayodele Ayobolu and Kemi Obadina, Head of Marketing and Communications respectively at Back Page Productions.
The film is set in the 1930s and 1940s and poised to recreate that period through restored locations and period automobiles. One of the leading characters, the late Mrs. Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, is the first woman in Nigeria to drive a car.
Nigeria’s history is also at the fore in Ake, especially the Egba Women’s Riots of 1945 led by Prof. Soyinka’s aunt and mother of the late musician  Fela Anikulapo-Kuti as well as Soyinka’s own mother, Eniola Soyinka. The riot climaxed with the famed deposition of the Alake of Egbaland, the abolition of the poll tax on Nigerian women and the institution of the universal adult suffrage.