N. Frank Ukadike was a qualified professor of cinema in the department of communication and program of African studies and African Diaspora in Tulane University (New Orleans, USA). Professor Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike obtained his master's degree in Film and Telecommunication from the University of Oregon, and a master's and doctorate in cinema studies from New York University. Widely published in scholarly journals and anthologies, his books are considered seminal. His research interests include Black Diaspora Cinema, Third world Cinema, Film History, Theory and Criticism and Cultural Studies. Professor Ukadike is widely consulted internationally on many aspects of African films and culture.
He is the author of "Black African Cinema" (1994), "Questioning African Cinema: Conversations With Filmmakers" (University of Minnesota Press, 2002, 304 pages).
He is editor of "New discourses of African Cinema" in 1995, and has published many reviews and anthologies. Frank Ukadike has just finished a work on the anthology, "Breaking canons": New approaches to African Cinema Discourse" and he is working now on two, projects of books, namely "The New African Cinema: History, Narratology, and the Aesthetics of Contemporary African Films and Nollywood's Worlds: Myths, Realities, Formulas and Contemporary Nigerian Cinema". He has received many honorific distinctions including Fulbright Program and Rockefeller foundation.
Professor Ukadike was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (National association of literature and arts men) to conduct research for his new book project The New African Cinema: The History, Narratology and Aesthetics of African Films of the 1990's".
He passed away Aug 4, 2018, while conducting research and visiting friends and family in Agbor, Nigeria.