Presented as a collaboration between Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta and the Alliance Francaise d’Atlanta, the photography exhibition “Things Fall Apart – Film Stills by Stephen Goldblatt” will start at Gallery 72 in Downtown on Feb. 20 and run through April 4.
“Things Fall Apart” is a Nigerian film directed by German filmmaker Hans Jürgen Pohland based on the novel of the same name by Chinua Achebe. The film was produced by the late Francis Oladele, who was also the brother-in-law of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.
Lead photo: Wolf Schmidt, Jason Pohland, Chinua Achebe, Francis Oladele during the production of “Things Fall Apart”… on set in 1971
THE exhibition “Things Fall Apart – Film Stills by Stephen Goldblatt” will start at Gallery 72 on Feb. 20 and run through April 4 (Photo provided by Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta).
A lost Nigerian film will return to Atlanta for the first time in 50 years, along with a new exhibition of photos from the film’s production.
Presented as a collaboration between Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta and the Alliance Francaise d’Atlanta, the photography exhibition “Things Fall Apart – Film Stills by Stephen Goldblatt” will start at Gallery 72 in Downtown on Feb. 20 and run through April 4. “Things Fall Apart” is a Nigerian film directed by German filmmaker Hans Jürgen Pohland based on the novel of the same name by Chinua Achebe. The film was produced by the late Francis Oladele, who was also the brother-in-law of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.
The film itself will screen in Atlanta during the exhibition. No date has been set, but a spokesperson said the date will be sometime in March.
The film first premiered in Atlanta in 1974, the same year that Lagos, Nigeria became a sister city to Atlanta, and the same year that the city established the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. However, the film then disappeared.
“I know that the film was premiered in Atlanta, and thereafter we didn’t hear anything about it,” said Frances Oladele’s son Lanre, who will be present at the exhibition’s opening reception on Feb. 20. “So when I was contacted …I just could not believe I was seeing the film.”
The film, along with more than 2,000 photographs of the production, was found roughly five years ago in storage at the German Kinemathek, a film archive. Mareike Palmeira, founder of the Modern Art Film Archive Berlin, said while there were people who knew that the film was in the archive, no one thought it was that important for a long time.
“The German director – he was, in the ’60s, one of the very important ones … but later, he got a bit forgotten. The film was there, but nobody realized that this was an important thing,” Palmeira said. “Like it is with archives, there’s a lot of stuff inside … What is really necessary is that people like us or journalists have access to, then go inside and find stories and histories, and make them accessible.”
The film “Things Fall Apart” follows a student named Obi Okonkwo who, upon finishing his studies in England, returns to Nigeria and finds himself in a country steeped in deep political turmoil.
According to information provided by Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta, the film was the second one made under Francis Oladele’s Calpenny Nigeria Films Limited. His first film, 1970’s “Kongi’s Harvest,” was directed by American filmmaker Ossie Davis. These two films helped pave the way for Nigeria’s film industry, dubbed Nollywood, to take off.
When Palmeira first discovered the film and the photographs, she started the process of restoring the film and researching its production. She was delighted to find that many of the cast and crew members who worked on “Things Fall Apart” went on to have prolific careers. For example, Stephen Goldblatt – who acted in the film and shot the still photographs in the exhibition – became a celebrated cinematographer known for movies like “The Help” and “The Prince of Tides,” with a couple of Academy Award nominations under his belt.
Palmeira said the process of restoring the film and setting up the exhibition has been one of international cooperation, much like the making of the film more than 50 years ago – “Things Fall Apart” is a movie based on the work of a Nigerian author with a Nigerian producer, a German director, and an American screenwriter.
“It was this kind of international co-production,” Palmeira said. “It’s really nice for me to have this kind of working together.”
Lanre Oladele said he believes international cooperation can help cross-cultural growth in a meaningful way.
“In those days, they called it a handshake across the ocean,” Lanre Oladele said. “When we have a handshake, culture becomes more robust. Stories become not just localized, but globalized. A lot will have to be done by artists, the government, to ensure that culture and story and film become pivotal to the eventual emergence of the people’s history.”
- https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2025/02/20/lost-nigerian-film-photo-exhibition-things-fall-apart-come-to-atlanta/
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