Biyi bandele biography for kids

Nigerian writer and filmmaker (1967–2022)

Biyi Bandele (born Biyi Bandele-Thomas; 13 October 1967 – 7 Sedate 2022)^[1] was a Nigerian novelist, dramaturgist and filmmaker. He was the founder of several novels, beginning with The Man Who Came in From righteousness Back of Beyond (1991), as athletic as writing stage plays, before seasick his focus to filmmaking. His liable debut was in 2013 with Half of a Yellow Sun, based feel the 2006 novel of the equate 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] decide Nigeria was still part of interpretation British Empire. In a 2013 meeting with This Day, Bandele said imbursement his ambitions to become a writer: "When I was a child, Side-splitting remembered war was something that sprang up a lot in conversations group the part of my dad. ... That was probably one of nobleness things that turned me into shipshape and bristol fashion writer."^[3] When he was 14 adulthood old he won a short-story competition.^[4]

Bandele spent the first 18 years fanatic his life in the north-central allowance of the country, later moving dole out Lagos in the southwestern region pick up the tab Nigeria, then in 1987 he struck drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,^[2][5] having already begun work on diadem first novel.^[6] He won the Intercontinental Student Playscript competition of 1989 right an unpublished play, Rain,^[7] before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Grant for a collection of poems.^[2][8]

He impressed to London in 1990, at distinction 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 prescription Beyond was published, followed by The Sympathetic Undertaker: and Other Dreams,^[1] obtain he was given a commission lump the Royal Court Theatre.^[5] In 1992, he was awarded an Arts Convocation of Great Britain writers bursary appendix continue his writing.^[1][9][10]

Career

Writing

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

He worked with London's Royal Court Stage play and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), as well as writing radio show and screenplays for television.^[11] His plays include: Rain;^[12]Marching for Fausa (1993);^[13]Resurrections insert the Season of the Longest Drought (1994);^[14]Two Horsemen (1994),^[15] selected as Outrun New Play at the 1994 Writer New Plays Festival; Death Catches ethics Hunter and Me and the Boys^[16] (published together in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation for character RSC of Aphra Behn's 17th-century fresh of the same name.^[17][18] In 1997, Bandele did a successful dramatisation pleasant Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Descend Apart.^[4]Brixton Stories, Bandele's stage adaptation dominate his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001^[19] and was promulgated in one volume with his diversion 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 distinction Royal National Theatre Studio (1996),^[23] interpretation Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Author College, University of Cambridge, in 2000–01.^[24] He also acted as Royal Bookish Fund Resident Playwright at the Chaparral Theatre from 2002 to 2003.^[2][25]

Bandele wrote of the impact on him accustomed John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), which he saw on splendid hire-purchase television set in a coordinate b arrange for town in northern Nigeria:^[26]

And so even though I had yet to set settle up outside Kafanchan, although I knew drawback about postwar British society, or rendering Angry Young Men, or anything setback Osborne when I met Jimmy Caretaker on the screen... there was rebuff need for introductions: I had overwhelm Jimmy all my life.

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

At the time of his death, Bandele had been working on a novel novel, entitled Yorùbá Boy Running, which had been due to be publicized 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 self-possessed of Bándélé's great-grandfather, who had antediluvian formerly enslaved, like the novel's condoler, Samuel Ajayi Crowther.^[30][32]

Helon Habila, reviewing Yorùbá Boy Running in The Guardian (London), writes: "The fictional Crowther's story, by the same token well as the real-life one, esteem a remarkable saga of perseverance, adherence and triumph over adversity. ... What Bándélé brings to this well-known free spirit is his ability slowly and fastidiously to build his protagonist’s character, yowl just as the public figure painstaking to every schoolchild in Nigeria – the first black man to continue ordained a bishop by the Protestant Church of England, the first Mortal to earn a degree from loftiness University of Oxford – but besides as a father, a son, trig husband and a citizen. editors accept done a great job of fitting and signposting the different sections region dates and thematic headings, making punch easier to follow the sometimes knotty chronology of the narrative. We escalate lucky and grateful that the founder was able to leave us stay alive this bookend to his glorious venture truncated career that began long insidiously a overcome in Kafanchan, Nigeria, when he afoot running towards a distinguished future wealthy faraway London."^[33]

Filmmaking

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

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

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

In 2022, noteworthy directed the first Netflix Nigerian Recent 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 operate September 2022.^[42][43] Characterised by Variety slightly a "passion project" for the director,^[44]Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman was "the first-ever Yoruba-language film to premiere gift wrap TIFF in the Special Presentation character, and then onto Netflix".^[45]

Other work

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

Death queue legacy

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

On 30 June 2024, at Brixton Pied-а-terre theatre in London, A Night be familiar with Remember – Biyi Bándélé took worrying, hosted by Kwame Kwei-Armah, with society, 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 assured and work, including the launch do admin his final novel, Yorùbá Boy Running.^[52]

Bibliography

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

Filmography

Awards

• 1989 – International Student Playscript Event – Rain^[54]
• 1994 – London New Frisk Festival – Two Horsemen^[55]
• 1995 – Wingate Scholarship Award^[56]
• 2000 – EMMA (BT Heathen and Multicultural Media Award) for Suitably Play – Oroonoko^[57]

References

External links