Meeting Newton Aduaka,The Most Accomplished Nigerian Filmmaker

Meeting Newton Aduaka,The Most Accomplished Nigerian Filmmaker

Meeting Newton Aduaka for the first time was a great moment for me after hearing and reading a lot about his outstanding accomplishments as a highly gifted black filmmaker from Nigeria and also from the same Ogidi kingdom like the great Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013).
We met in a building on Victoria Island in Lagos, Africa's largest megacity and the hub of Nollywood, the first indie film industry in the continent.

It was after he curated the 2018 edition of the annual Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) last November when the leading lady of the Nigerian film industry, Ms. Chioma Ude, Founder and Executive Director of AFRIFF gave me an informal appointment to discuss her global goals for the institutionalisation of the most advanced international film festival in Nigeria which has attracted highly esteemed filmmakers in Africa and the Diaspora.
We shook hands as we greeted and I commended the laudable success of his illustrious career as one of Africa's most accomplished filmmakers.
He was looking surreal with his short dreadlocks and wearing a shirt and denim trousers and leather slippers. No airs and no graces. I have always seen him first and foremost as an artist and included him among the best twenty Nigerian filmmakers in the first edition of my NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series, the first book series on the Nigerian film industry.

Aduaka is the most celebrated Nigerian filmmaker who has won highly coveted international awards other Nigerian filmmakers have not won. He is most famous for his gripping war film, "Ezra" about the traumatizing experience of child soldiers during the horrifying Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002).

The following biographical information is from GranitFilms
http://www.granitfilms.com/english/newton-i-aduaka/:
With "Ezra" in 2007, Newton I Aduaka won the Etalon d’or de Yennenga (the golden stallion of Yennenga), the highest honour for an African Film Maker at the festival of pan-African cinema, FESPACO. Ezra premiered in the World cinema competition at the Sundance film festival, was nominated for the Humanitas Prize and screened in a special section of the Critics’ Week in Cannes. Ezra has appeared in numerous film festivals and events across the world and has been awarded 28 times including 6 Grand Jury prizes and a Federation of International Film Critics (Fipresci) award. Ezra has been named as one of the most important anti-war films ever made. It was awarded the United Nation’s prize for Peace and Tolerance. In 2001 Newton’s debut feature film Rage, became the first wholly independently financed film by a black filmmaker in the history of British cinema to be released nation-wide. In the same year he was a recipient of the Carlton television multicultural award in the UK for Rage, which was bought by Arte France. In 2002 Newton was invited as Filmmaker in Residence by Festival de Cannes’ Cinéfondation in Paris. In the same year Aduaka was commissioned by the Society of French Directors (SRF) and the Cannes film festival’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs to make a short film on “Cinema and Globalization”. The result was Funeral – 2002. In 2004, his short film Aïcha premiered in Mostra de Venise. In 2004 and 2010 the organization, Global Dialogue, commissioned Aduaka to direct four short films on AIDS awareness. These films have been translated into numerous African languages, English, French and Portuguese and are effectively used as educational tools across the world. In 2007 Aduaka was invited to hold a Master class at the Cannes Film Festival. In the summer of 2007 Aduaka was invited to speak at TED, “Africa: The Next Chapter”, held in Arusha. His speech is available online at www.ted.com. In 2008 the Berlin film festival invited him, as an expert, to speak on aesthetics of Cinema at the Berlinale Talent Campus. Aduaka’s third feature film, One Man’s Show, was awarded the Critics’ Prize at Fespaco 2013 and did its American premiere at Mill Valley. The British newspaper “The Independent” named Aduaka as one of the 50 best living African artists. Aduaka is currently resident in Paris.

NB:
Quinzaine des Réalisateurs is the Directors' Fortnight

"Among the different selections of the Cannes Film Festival, the Directors' Fortnight is distinguished by its freedom of mind, its non-competitive nature and its desire to share its films (...)"
Luc Moullet

The Directors' Fortnight (French: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) is an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festival as an act of solidarity with striking workers.
French
Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Location
Théâtre Croisette, J. W. Marriott, Cannes, France
Founded
1969
Language
French, English
Website
quinzaine-realisateurs.com
The Directors' Fortnight showcases a programme of shorts and feature films and documentaries worldwide.