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Following the remarkable success of one of his most recent works, Aníkúlápó, renowned film director and producer, Kunle Afolayan, revealed that his audience should expect the serialization of the movie. Aníkúlápóis a 2022 Nigerian epic fantasy film produced by Kunle Afolayan and distributed by Netflix. Released on 30 September 2022, it stars Kunle Remi, Bimbo Ademoye, Sola Sobowale,Hakeem Kae-Kazim and Taiwo Hassan.
The heavily decorated movie producer stated this on Sunday, March 5, 2023, while featuring on the ToyinFalola Interview Series chaired by the erudite professorof African history, Professor Toyin Falola, who was represented by Adepoju Oluwatoyin. Among other prominent movie lovers and film critics who formed the panel of interviewers and audience were MolaraWood, Steve Ayorinde, and Pelumi Folajimi. The event was streamed live via Facebook, Zoom, Telegraph, among other various social media platforms.
According to Afolayan, the need to create masterpieces which capture the essence of Yoruba mythology has remained one of his driving forces. “I have been working on Odu for over six years. The background story was Saro and Akala which was a verse in OduIfa. In film, if you are going to have the right ingredients, you must infuse some fiction. The Akalaand Saro stories are true to Odu Ifa. But there are quite a number of other things that we infused which are not in that Odu. When I started nursing this idea, I started with Baba Elebuibon who told us the story. I brought together a group of writers: Tunde Babalola, RopoEwenla, and others. We sat with Baba Elebuibon and we had an interactive session. After this, we went further to sit and develop like ten episodes. I shopped this around for about five years, I couldn’t get it off the ground. I started talking to Netflix as far back as 2016. They said we test Anikulapo as a film. We did that. To the glory of God it became a success. Then the conversation started with getting it to the original proposition which is making a series.
“This year, we are going to be doing the first season of the series. What informed the story was my fascination with exploring the idea of the orisha and finding a way to create a balance between entertainment and visual art without necessarily preaching a particular religion. What we want to do is create masterpieces that capture the essence of Yoruba mythology and the world beyond us. We want to use audio-visual to do justice to that,” he said.
Earlier, Afolayan noted that for a director of his ilk, multitasking and taking on various roles during movie production has remained central to his business. According to him, “There are different types of directors. There are directors who focus a lot on framing and visual styles of story-telling. There are those who focus on directing the actors. There are directors who are particular about dialogue. Understanding the actors is very important for me. I have a very good knowledge about the technicalities of making film. I say to many of my actors that one of the key things which I look out for is discipline. When an actor is disciplined, he or she would have long-term relationship with a lot of filmmakers, be it the producers or the directors. When I make film, I don’t only play the role of a director, while filming, I am already thinking of editing. I am already thinking of how I want to bring the story together. From pre-production, I would usually engage the director of photography, and then the production designer. Say for example in the movie, Anikulapo, we were meant to work with a particular person as director and production designer and for some reason he was not available. I took the role upon myself. I was involved in designing the set, choosing the right costumes and colors, balancing the set with the right costumes, balancing the texture of the actors’ faces, and then going further to work with the make-up artist to say look don’t shave their armpits. These are roles of production and direction designers. Yet these are things I am always particular about. At the same time, I have a clear vision of how I want each of the scenes to connect together. I think it is about paying attention to the artistic side of things and the technicality side of things. I think this is very important for any director who really would like to balance the aesthetics and the visual aspects of filmmaking.”
Speaking about his background and the circumstances which influenced his entrance into film production and his arrival at movie ideas, Afolayan revealed that “It doesn’t take me long to convert an idea or thought into life. I really don’t do long-term plans. Growing up, I was fortunate to experience first-hand production through my father and his crew. But at that time, that thought was not there, about going into filmmaking. I was just a young boy who was fascinated with filmmaking. But I later realised that story-telling is something that I am gifted in. Tunde Kilani played a major role in helping me to understand and form how connected I am with the culture and the values in our cultures and our ways. I have been very intentional about the kind of stories that I tell. If you look at the various movies that I have done, even though from different genres, all of them reflect and connect us to our culture.”
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