Tunde Kelani is a seasoned Nigerian filmmaker wrapping up his sixteenth film, Dazzling Mirage. On the film's website Mainframe Movies, his production company founded in 1991, promotes this as a "movie and a movement."

This is not Nollywood. Observers, scholars, and critics usually describe Nollywood as everything but "cinema." For some critics, it's all absence except for its productivity: "third largest cinema in the world!" And it's true, Nollywood doesn't have the educational, mobilizing, historically, and culturally thick practice that Kelani brings to each and every production (here on his YouTube page you can see clips from his musical Arugba and click to check out other work). That is what always sets him apart. As does his independence from the production schemes that are Nollywood.*

Kelani just visited Indiana University for the workshop "Digital Paradox: Piracy, Ownership, and the Constraints of African Screen Media," on October 18, 2013, part of the larger New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa project (full disclosure, I am part of the collective and Sean Jacobs, AIAC heavy, once participated). Maami, an adaptation of Femi Osofisan's play, screened on Oct. 17 (we reviewed it here, before it ran at the Lincoln Center's AFF in 2012). Kelani, affectionately known by filmmakers and writers as TK, kindly sat down to speak with me after the event.


READ MORE at Africasacountry.com


Fund the movie at indiegogo.com/at/dazzlingmirage