IREP Film Festival Beckons: Soyinka in the Spotlight

Segun Atanda/

The stage is set for the 2024 edition of the iREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival from March 21st – 24th at its primary home, Lagos.

According to a statement by Femi Odugbemi, the Executive Director of iREP, the prime project of the Foundation for Promotion of Documentary Film Festival in Africa (FPDFA), the leading platform for documentary films promotion in Nigeria and West Africa, will also be hosted in virtual format.

Founded in 2010, the iREP Festival has the founding generic theme Africa in Self-Conversation, which encourages cross exchanges of ideas and developmental aspirations among the diverse peoples of Africa and the global black family.
iREP 2024, the 14th edition of the annual ritual, will feature conversations, screenings, workshops, networking sessions, and other related activities.

Films Featuring
Over 45 films are expected to be screened at the two venues hosting the festival this year vis: Freedom Park, 1 Hospital Road, Lagos Island, and Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi. The films – short are long features — have been drawn from largely Nigerian filmmakers and their counterparts from 25 countries in four continents, who submitted their entries via Filmfreeway.

However, there are also some specially curated films selected for the festival, some of which have made the round of international festival circuits and have won awards around the world.

Inner City Screening: Documentary for the Underserved communities
The Inner City Screening (ICS) project which the iREP launched as spotlight of the 2023 edition of the festival is returning for its second iteration. Tagged Documentary film for the UNDERSERVED, the project was conceived to spread documentary film ideas and contents to communities that are not usually captured in the screening and consumption of media contents. The four communities – Bariga, Ajegunle, Ikorodu, and Ejigbo – where selected films were screened in the 2023 edition, will also host screening sessions in the 2024 edition.

Theme
The 2024 edition’s theme, RIGHTING THE FUTURE, is deliberately chosen to instigate conversation between the present and the future of the continent, as well as encourage deeper dialogue between the young people and their elders. The provocative theme is set in the context of happenings in this season of political anomalies and leadership failures in many countries of the continent.

The SOYINKA Edition
IREP 2024 is designated as “The SOYINKA edition” to commemorate the 90th birthday anniversary of the distinguished global cultural icon, poet, playwright, essayist, polemicist and Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, Professor Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka. He embodies the virtues of the quintessential ‘citizen activist’ with the clarity of vision and passion for the betterment of our collective humanity needed to hold power accountable to the people. Over the past six decades and more, he has consistently deployed his intellectual acumen and personal resources to defend human values and the fundamentality of the freedom of the individual to resist oppression. He is renowned to have also displayed a high degree of patriotic zeal to clamour for good governance and participatory democracy by citizens of the country, even at grave risks to his personal comfort and career. For his tenacious hold to his convictions, he has sometimes run into problem with consecutive state authorities and certain sections of the society. But he remains steadfast in his self-imposed battles to always right the wrongs he perceives in his social, cultural and political environments. These are the values and virtues that iREP hopes to spotlight and celebrate at the 2024 festival with the intention to assure members of the social milleu that they can hold on to their beliefs and convictions without being herded by the mob.

The Soyinka section will cover two days of the festival and will be staged at the Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, the day one keynote on RIGHTING the FUTURE: Soyinka & His Engagements will be delivered by Prof Manthia Diawara, writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar, art historian, and distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at the New York University. He is the writer and director of “Negritude: A Dialogue between Wole Soyinka and Leopold Senghor.” The second day keynote on the humanistic ideals of Soyinka as reflected in his works will be delivered by Professor Awam Amkpa, Dean of Arts and Humanities and Vice Provost at the New York University, NYUAD, as well as Global Network Professor of Drama, Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU New York. Each keynote will be followed by a panel discussion and screenings of films related to Soyinka’s career.

The iREP International Documentary Film Festival serves as an educational and cultural platform, harnessing the influence of film and related industries to encourage public engagement in the developments of their socio-cultural and political environments. The overarching objective of the iREP aims to raise awareness about the documentary format’s potential to deepen and share social and cultural education, while also fostering participatory democracy in our societies.

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