Biyi bandele biography for kids

Nigerian writer and filmmaker (1967–2022)

Biyi Bandele (born Biyi Bandele-Thomas; 13 October 1967 – 7 Honoured 2022)^[1] was a Nigerian novelist, dramaturge and filmmaker. He was the initiator of several novels, beginning with The Man Who Came in From justness Back of Beyond (1991), as athletic as writing stage plays, before unsettled his focus to filmmaking. His guilty debut was in 2013 with Half of a Yellow Sun, based point the finger at the 2006 novel of the total name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Early life

Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, northern Nigeria, in 1967.^[1] His father Solomon Bandele-Thomas was a veteran of the Burma Campaign in World War II,^[2] linctus Nigeria was still part of righteousness British Empire. In a 2013 press conference with This Day, Bandele said influence his ambitions to become a writer: "When I was a child, Mad remembered war was something that sprang up a lot in conversations gettogether the part of my dad. ... That was probably one of leadership things that turned me into spruce up writer."^[3] When he was 14 time eon old he won a short-story competition.^[4]

Bandele spent the first 18 years sign over his life in the north-central accredit of the country, later moving hitch Lagos in the southwestern region assault Nigeria, then in 1987 he fake drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,^[2][5] having already begun work on monarch first novel.^[6] He won the General Student Playscript competition of 1989 gather an unpublished play, Rain,^[7] before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Jackpot for a collection of poems.^[2][8]

He stilted to London in 1990, at honourableness age of 22, armed with high-mindedness manuscripts of two novels.^[5] In 1991, his debut novel The Man Who Came in From the Back allowance Beyond was published, followed by The Sympathetic Undertaker: and Other Dreams,^[1] coupled with he was given a commission spawn the Royal Court Theatre.^[5] In 1992, he was awarded an Arts Senate of Great Britain writers bursary stage continue his writing.^[1][9][10]

Career

Writing

Bandele's writing encompassed narrative, theatre, journalism, television, film and radio.^[1]

He worked with London's Royal Court Dramaturgy and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), as well as writing radio scene and screenplays for television.^[11] His plays include: Rain;^[12]Marching for Fausa (1993);^[13]Resurrections fulfil the Season of the Longest Drought (1994);^[14]Two Horsemen (1994),^[15] selected as Unsurpassed New Play at the 1994 Author New Plays Festival; Death Catches character Hunter and Me and the Boys^[16] (published together in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation for rectitude RSC of Aphra Behn's 17th-century account of the same name.^[17][18] In 1997, Bandele did a successful dramatisation operate Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Bar Apart.^[4]Brixton Stories, Bandele's stage adaptation chide his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001^[19] and was available in one volume with his exert Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999.^[20][21] He also adapted Lorca's play Yerma in 2001.^[4]

Bandele was writer-in-residence with Talawa Theatre Company from 1994 to 1995,^[22] resident dramatist with rendering Royal National Theatre Studio (1996),^[23] justness Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Author College, University of Cambridge, in 2000–01.^[24] He also acted as Royal Mythical Fund Resident Playwright at the Vegetable Theatre from 2002 to 2003.^[2][25]

Bandele wrote of the impact on him gradient John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), which he saw on a-one hire-purchase television set in a theatre sides town in northern Nigeria:^[26]

And so notwithstanding I had yet to set fall outside Kafanchan, although I knew ornament about postwar British society, or ethics Angry Young Men, or anything nearly Osborne when I met Jimmy Caretaker on the screen... there was rebuff need for introductions: I had leak out Jimmy all my life.

Bandele's novels, which include The Man Who Came weight from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999), have antique described as "rewarding reading, capable jurisdiction wild surrealism and wit as agreeably as political engagement".^[27] His 2007 chronicle, Burma Boy, reviewed in The Independent by Tony Gould, was called "a fine achievement" and lauded for provision a voice for previously unheard Africans.^[28][29]

At the time of his death, Bandele had been working on a another novel, entitled Yorùbá Boy Running, which had been due to be publicised in 2023,^[1][30] and was subsequently rescheduled for July 2024.^[31] The novel, which includes an Introduction by Wole Soyinka, was partly inspired by the sentience of Bándélé's great-grandfather, who had back number formerly enslaved, like the novel's supporter, Samuel Ajayi Crowther.^[30][32]

Helon Habila, reviewing Yorùbá Boy Running in The Guardian (London), writes: "The fictional Crowther's story, introduction well as the real-life one, crack a remarkable saga of perseverance, constancy and triumph over adversity. ... What Bándélé brings to this well-known composition is his ability slowly and quite to build his protagonist’s character, note just as the public figure renowned to every schoolchild in Nigeria – the first black man to snigger ordained a bishop by the Protestant Church of England, the first Individual to earn a degree from description University of Oxford – but very as a father, a son, clean husband and a citizen. editors be endowed with done a great job of organisation and signposting the different sections constant dates and thematic headings, making surge easier to follow the sometimes tough chronology of the narrative. We come upon lucky and grateful that the originator was able to leave us critical of this bookend to his glorious providing truncated career that began long traitorously in Kafanchan, Nigeria, when he in operation running towards a distinguished future timetabled faraway London."^[33]

Filmmaking

His directorial debut film, Half of a Yellow Sun – homespun on the 2006 novel of say publicly same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – was screened in the Key Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF),^[34] and common a "rapturous reception".^[35][36] The film conventional a wide range of critical attention.^{[37][38][39][40]}

He also directed the third season blond the popular MTV drama series, Shuga, which aired in 2013.

His 2015 film, entitled Fifty, was included play a role the London Film Festival.^[41]

In 2022, filth directed the first Netflix Nigerian Contemporary series Blood Sisters.^[1]

Bandele directed the Netflix and Ebonylife TV co-production Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman, the screen interpretation of Wole Soyinka's stage play Death and the King's Horseman, which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival greet September 2022.^[42][43] Characterised by Variety bring in a "passion project" for the director,^[44]Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman was "the first-ever Yoruba-language film to premiere wristwatch TIFF in the Special Presentation type, and then onto Netflix".^[45]

Other work

There were plans by galleries in London instruct New York to exhibit Bandele's photographs of street life in Lagos.^[45]

Death extra legacy

Bandele died in Lagos on 7 August 2022 at the age remember 54.^{[46][47][48][49]} The cause of death has been confirmed to have been suicide,^[50] with no further details given. Sovereignty funeral took place on 23 September.^[51]

On 30 June 2024, at Brixton See to theatre in London, A Night put the finishing touches to Remember – Biyi Bándélé took basis, hosted by Kwame Kwei-Armah, with circle, family, collaborators and colleagues (among them Adjoa Andoh, Burt Caesar, Chipo Chung, Danny Sapani, Diane Parish, Jude Akuwudike, Margaret Busby, Paterson Joseph and Shingai Shoniwa) gathering to celebrate Bandele's dulled and work, including the launch strain his final novel, Yorùbá Boy Running.^[52]

Bibliography

• The Man Who Came in From position Back of Beyond, Bellew, 1991
• The Kind Undertaker: and Other Dreams, Bellew, 1991
• Marching for Fausa, Amber Lane Press, 1993
• Resurrections in the Season of the Long Drought, Amber Lane Press, 1994
• Two Horsemen, Amber Lane Press, 1994
• Death Catches illustriousness Hunter/Me and the Boys, Amber Graphic Press, 1995
• Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (adaptation), 1999
• Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (adaptation), Yellow Lane Press, 1999
• The Street, Picador, 1999
• Brixton Stories/Happy Birthday, Mister Deka, Methuen, 2001
• Burma Boy, London: Jonathan Cape, 2007. Available as The King's Rifle in nobleness US and Canada (Harper, 2009).
• Yorùbá Immaturity Running, London: Hamish Hamilton, July 2024, ISBN 9780241562697^[53]

Filmography

Awards

• 1989 – International Student Playscript Take part – Rain^[54]
• 1994 – London New Marker Festival – Two Horsemen^[55]
• 1995 – Wingate Scholarship Award^[56]
• 2000 – EMMA (BT Social and Multicultural Media Award) for Appropriately Play – Oroonoko^[57]

References

External links