He had a chat with GuardianLife as coverstar for a recent edition..
Excerpts..
How would you describe yourself? Where were you born and where did you study?
Well I am Kunle, I am real. I am very focused. If I believe in something, I just go for it. I am a dreamer. Once I dream, I work towards actualising it, I put in all my energy and that has always worked for me. I was born in Lagos, I spent three years of my life in Kwara state, that’s where I am from. I did the latter part of my college in Kwara and after then I came back to Lagos. After that I did my higher institution in Lagos State Polytechnic. I only spent about six months in the UK studying digital filmmaking and since then I have been back in Lagos. I studied business administration and worked at the bank for about seven years. Then I started making films. I started as an actor in 1998 and I set up my production company in 2005, I made my first film in 2006 and that is what it has been. I do TV production, we do documentaries, commercials, film, a lot of people know me for feature films but my Golden Effect company runs on its own. I run as a brand.
When I was going to start, I was actually going to start as a filmaker, then I reached out to some people who worked with my father in the past and some of them just thought I was a joke. Filmmaking is something you have to learn. Yes it is an acquired skill but you can’t say, “Oh I have talent of being a film maker.”
You have to learn, and with the camera you have to learn how to operate all these gears. It is a lot of processes. Going to them I was barely 20. I went to Tunde Kelani, I went to a few people. They told me, for you to be a filmmaker you have to learn it. You go to school but you look like you have a good face for camera, why don’t you start as an actor just like your father? Then he said we are working on Sunday, you can come for audition and I was picked. We did the film Saworoide in ’98. The production values were really good, it made a hit, I played a prince. It was a very good film and it gave me a lot of mileage. I was already working in a bank when we shot that film. After that it was difficult for me to do a lot because of my bank work.
You mentioned your father was in the film business, can you tell me a bit about your father and how he influenced you towards this path.
My father was an actor, he was one of the film pioneers in Nigeria. He crossed from travelling theatre to travelling cinema. They move around with their cameras and troop. I spent most of my days as a child travelling with the family and troop. Did I learn to make films from that? No it was impossible. Sometimes we would go on their set just to kid around, myself and some of my brothers, and they would send us home. I learnt the business of film through the family, because from age 13, I used to travel for my dad’s films to neighbouring towns and countries in West Africa. Through that I learnt how the ticketing and cinema business runs, publicity etc, it has really helped me.
Tell us about your creative process, how did the idea for a period movie like October 1st come about?
I love culture. A lot of times, my heart skips when I remember that some of these things are going. I remember we don’t archive things in this country. I remember that in the nearest future my children won’t be speaking our language. So I said I want to do a small film set in a small location about a particular tribe. They don’t speak Yoruba, they don’t speak Igbo or Hausa, they speak a minority language. It was pretty difficult. Tunde Babalola who wrote the film gave me the synopsis for October 1st, that was not what I was looking to do, I was looking to do a small budget film, anything period of course will increase your budget. In re-enacting the period you need to spend a lot of money especially in a country where you don’t have archives. It was a bit difficult to shoot, because we had to travel to Ondo to all these places that depict what we were looking for but in the end we pulled it off.
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