Ola Balogun was born on 1 August 1945 and is a Nigerian filmmaker and scriptwriter.
18 Facts About Ola Balogun
1.
2.
Ola Balogun ventured into the Nigerian music industry in 2001.
3.
Ola Balogun was born in 1945 in Aba, Nigeria, to Yoruba parents.
4.
Ola Balogun's father practised law in Aba until his death when Balogun was 12.
5.
Ola Balogun attended Christ the King School, Aba, from 1951 to 1957, then went to King's College, Lagos.
6.
Ola Balogun studied at the University of Dakar from 1962 to 1963, at the University of Caen in France, and at the Institut des hautes etudes cinematographiques, where Christopher Miles was a fellow student.
7.
Ola Balogun returned to Nigeria during the Nigerian Civil War and at a time Nigeria did not have an indigenous cinema industry.
8.
Ola Balogun returned to Nigeria and was affiliated with the Institute of African Studies at University of Ife.
9.
Ola Balogun's follow-up was Vivre, a non-fiction story about his friend who became handicapped as a result of an accident.
10.
Ajani Ogun, Ola Balogun's first indigenous Yoruba-language film is a musical released in celluloid form in 1975.
11.
Ola Balogun reached a wider audience with Ajani Ogun and the success of the film led to an increase in the adoption of stage plays performed by Yoruba traveling theatres into feature-length movies.
12.
Ola Balogun bounced back with Ija Ominira, an adaptation of Adebayo Faleti's novel, Omo Olokun Esin, which was being performed on stage by a theatre troupe.
13.
Ola Balogun followed Ade Love's Ija Ominira with A Deusa Negra, known as Black Goddess, which he both wrote and directed; the project was a Nigerian-Brazilian collaboration distributed by Embrafilme of Brazil.
14.
In 1980, Ola Balogun produced Cry Freedom, with Prunella Gee and Albert Hall in the lead roles.
15.
The film was shot in Ghana, and Ola Balogun used some technicians, such as Jose Medeiros, who had previously worked with him on A Deusa Negra.
16.
Thereafter, Ola Balogun stopped working with lead actors from the Yoruba theatre group.
17.
Ola Balogun was a member of President Babangida's Political Bureau but resigned due to concerns over the means of achieving the bureau's objectives.
18.
Ola Balogun has been a regular attendee at FESPACO.