TheCable

The 2009 Nigerian thriller, The Figurine (Araromire) by prolific Nollywood actor and director, Kunle Afolayan, is back in book form. And it will soon be hitting the book shelves. 

Five years ago, The Figurine hit the limelight and won five awards, one of which was the Best Film category of the prestigious African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA).

As a movie, The Figurine was critically acclaimed. It was praised for its top-notch cinematography, and for being the movie to finally break the jinx of mediocrity in Nollywood and for leading the revolutionary rebirth of the industry.

It’s no surprise now that the outstandingly brilliant Afolayan has chosen to tell the film’s story in a scholarly book titled  Auteuring Nollywood: Critical Perspectives on The Figurine, to be unvieled at a major ceremony on Thursday, July 31, 2014 at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos.

“Termed as an event that will be “one of Nollywood‘s greatest moments outside a movie location,” the book unveiling and launching  is set to witness a rich array of Nollywood stars, allied film professionals, academics, top government functionaries, captains of industry and members of the diplomatic corps,” the organisers said in a statement.

The ceremony will be chaired by a well-respected partriach of the arts and former minister of national planning, Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi.

The book, a collection of scholarly essays, is the first of its kind devoted to the work of a single Nigerian film director. It interrogates the thematic focus and cinematic style employed in The Figurine, while also using that singular work to engage the new trends in the new Nigerian cinema popularly referred to as Nollywood.

Edited by Dr. Adeshina Afolayan of the Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, the book’s Foreword was written by Prof. Jonathan Haynes of the Long Island University, USA and a notable scholar on Nollywood.