Kunle Afolayan lauds book on Figurine

Actor cum filmmaker, Kunle Afolayan, has lauded the book, ‘Auteuring Nollywood: Critical Perspectives in The Figurine,’ saying it is a book every film maker should have.

Edited by Shina Afolayan, his sibling and a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Kunle said he didn’t know the book would turn out to be a success.

“My brother mentioned to me he was going to do something like this five years ago but I didn’t take him seriously. He is a scholar. He came to my place and I was working on Figurine. He saw all the challenges I was going through while making that movie.

“He saw the rough cut of the movie and said there hadn’t been anything like this. I am not sure he thought the book would turn out this big because it was five years ago. He interviewed me and he also interviewed some of the cast and crew.

“While he was doing that, the film was travelling all over the world to festivals and winning awards. He decided to involve other scholars of films in different countries. It is actually a collection of essays, reviews, interviews of actors and analysing the African cinemas and Nollywood industry. He used Figurine to analyse the aesthetics of the Nigerian film industry,” he said.

The filmmaker said the book will encourage a lot of people including non practitioners.

“Schools will want to use the book in their academics. It appeals to the academic world and to the movie practitioners. It is a blend of both. The academics have their own world and they report what they gather from the practitioners. But the two merged in this book,” he said.

The public presentation of the book will hold in Lagos later this month.