Ebrohimie Road, documentary on Soyinka’s bungalow, premieres

A documentary film, Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, will premiere on July 11 as part of activities marking the 90th birthday of Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka.

The movie will premiere at the University of Lagos at an event themed ‘ENI-OGUN: An Enduring Legacy’ jointly organised by the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE) and the Nigeria Academy of Letter.

Apart from the screening, the event will feature a symposium, dance performance and reception.

The 110-minute documentary, written and directed by the writer and culture researcher Kola Tubosun and with the ace cinematographer Tunde Kelani behind the camera, will be shown in other national and global cultural and historical locations.

These include the WS90 celebration in London, jointly organised by the WSICE and The Africa Centre on July 20, Africa Centre, New York, Centro Cultural Africano, Mexico (July 13), Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA), Freedom Park, Lagos (July 14), Hutchinson Centre, Harvard University, USA (September 2024).

Others are the University of Leeds, UK(October 2024), Lagos International Poetry Festival (October 2024) and Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF/CORA) (Nov 2024).

‘Ebrohimie Road, A Museum of Memory’ centres on the little building on the University of Ibadan campus where Professor Soyinka lived as a teacher.

It was the same bungalow located a few meters from the university’s main gate where Soyinka was arrested in 1967 on “espionage” charges for daring to cross to the Biafra Republic to dissuade then Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the secessionist group, from going to war with the government of Nigeria.

This led to his incarceration for 29 months by the Nigerian government headed by  Lt. General Yakubu Gowon. He was released in October 1969, a few weeks before the war ended in 1970, and even though he returned to the house, he did not return to his job at the Department of Theatre Arts but proceeded on exile in 1971.

Produced by Olongo Africa, Ebrohimie Road… features revealing interviews with immediate families, relatives, associates as well as comrades of Soyinka,

A statement from the producers explained: “In Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, we examine how the personal became national, through the recollection of central and peripheral characters; how a small campus residence became witness to some of the most significant issues in Nigerian social, political, and literary history, many of which remain unresolved. And how ecological changes contribute to the erosion of history and a sense of place. Through stories, visuals, and historical records, we unearth what makes Ebrohimie Road more than just a campus street or physical location, a place of history and a museum of memory.”

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