Tunde Kelani

FAMILY BACKGROUND, EDUCATION AND CAREER

2.1 Early life

Born on 26th February, 1948 in Lagos, Nigeria to Muslim parents, but he grew up at the family compound in Abeokuta with his grandfather. He was separated from my mother at age five and he sort of missed everybody because he was the eldest child in the family and it was his father’s policy to send them (the children) to Abeokuta. Once he was five (years old), he had to go and so he waited for another three years before his sister joined me. He was very lonely and he was plucked from the heart of Lagos, their house was close to Tinubu Square, straight to the family compound in Abeokuta where there weren’t any electricity. He was afraid of the dark mostly because of the stories they were told. Unfortunately, the toilet was not part of the building so he had to go out in the dark to use the toilet. They told him different stories. He heard the story about dead people not leaving immediately, that they would be in the house. And he was dared to take a needle and stick it into the four corners of the house if he did not believe it. But of course no one tried to do that. He got to know a lot about Yoruba religion and festivals. His favorite of all is the Egungun because of its responsibility to entertain the Yoruba nation.

Babatunde his had primary education at Oke-Ona United Primary School, Iberekodo, Abeokuta between 1955 and 1960 and between 1962 and 1966 he was at Abeokuta Grammar School for secondary education. Tunde Kelani holds a Diploma in the Art and Technique of Filmmaking from the London International Film School, London. Once he left, he didn’t come back to Lagos until after his secondary education. His father delayed him one-year so he could attend the Government College Ibadan. But this didn’t happen so he ended up at the Abeokuta Grammar School, which is an equally good school.

According to him, growing up in Abeokuta had a very positive influence on him and his career:

“bless my father, he is late now, who ensured that I grew up in the family compound at Abeokuta, otherwise I would have missed the essence of Yoruba culture. I know that scholars and researchers all over the world have tried to familiarize themselves with the Yoruba culture but there is nothing like the real thing. It clearly made me a different person.”

He was introduced to Yoruba literature from an early stage in his life and was also greatly influenced by theatre as the Yorubas had a very strong travelling theatre tradition at that time. When he was in secondary school, he had the privilege to see most of the great Yoruba theatre classics including the Palmwine Drinkard, Oba Koso, Kurunmi, Ogunde plays and more.

2. 2 Choosing a Career

At the beginning he didn’t know he would venture into filmmaking. But just before he finished primary school, he discovered photography. He actually owned his first camera from primary school. Throughout his secondary school, he spent a lot of time and invested a lot of money mastering photography. So by the time he left secondary school, he was more or less an accomplished photographer. Another thing was that he loved films; he saw all the great films such as The Lawrence of Arabia, The Helen of Troy, Elizabeth Taylor, etc. At first he didn’t believe they were acting. He thought they were there when these historical events happened, that sort of fascinated him. So he thought it would be another dimension of photography to do moving images. There was nothing wrong with his photography, except that he wanted to make the art more dynamic. So basically, that was how he got into making motion picture. He was employed at the former Western Nigerian Television Station where he was trained as a cameraman. Then thereafter, because of the need to learn how to make film he had to attend the London Film Institute. From his experience in the community, he saw the challenges of his people, thus for him, with his previous experience growing up and the closeness to his people and their culture, he could not