The Man Died: Profiling Wole Soyinka – Awam Amkpa

Talk Description

This lecture will examine scholarship of the late Professor Tejumola Olaniyan and the making of The Man Died (2024), which the speaker directed and for which they won Best Director at the 2025 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA). Based on Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s harrowing prison memoir, the film chronicles his detention without trial under a brutal military regime determined to silence his voice.

Speaker’s Bio

Awam Amkpa is the Vice Provost for the Arts; Dean of Arts and Humanities; Professor of Drama, Social and Cultural Analysis at the New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He is also affliated with NYU. He receieved a BA Obafemi Awolowo University (Ile-Ife), an MA Ahmadu Bello University (Zaria), and a PhD Bristol University. His research areas include modernisms in film and theater, postcolonial film and theater, Black Atlantic films and theater, visual arts. Awam is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (Routledge, 2003). He is director of film documentaries and curator of photographic exhibitions and film festivals. Amkpa has written several articles on representations in Africa and its diasporas, representations, and modernisms in theater, postcolonial theater, and Black Atlantic films. For his recent film, The Man Died (2024), he won the presitigous Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) for Best Director (2025).

This event is sponsored by the Tejumola Olaniyan Foundation (TOF).

The event is free and open to the public.