Admin l Tuesday, 09 August 2022
LAGOS, Nigeria – Nigerian filmmaker and creator of Half of a Yellow Sun, Biyi Bamidele is dead. He was 55 years. His daughter Temi Bamidele, who made the confirmation on her Facebook page said the filmmaker died on Sunday.
“I am heartbroken to share the sudden and unexpected death on Sunday 7th of August in Lagos of my father Biyi Bandele”, she said, Temi did not state the cause of his death.
Biyi Bamidele co-director of Netflix debut series ‘Blood Sisters’ and he directed the Nigerian movie, Half of a Yellow Sun in 2013, an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, novel Half of a Yellow Sun, which featured Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and John Boyega for which he also wrote the screenplay.
His television work includes Not Even God is Wise Enough, a BBC2 drama directed by Danny Boyle in 1994, and Bad Boys (BBC 2, 1996) starring Clive Owen. He wrote and directed two seasons of the MTV series Shuga.
Born in 1967 to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, northern Nigeria. Biyi Bandele left his parents’ house at age 14 to earn his living doing odd jobs, while also going to school and writing his first novel. From 1987-1990 he studied Drama at the University of Ile-Ife, where his play Rain won him a scholarship that brought him to the UK. His plays have been staged at the Royal Court Theatre and have been performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1997, he adapted Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for the stage, to international critical acclaim, and in 1999 wrote a new adaptation of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.
He was Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge from 2000-2002, and Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at Bush Theatre from 2002-2003. Bandele’s first and second novels, The Man Who Came In From The Back of Beyond and The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams, were published in 1991 and were followed in 1999 by The Street and, in 2007, by Burma Boy.
His 2nd feature Fifty premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2015. He recently directed and co-produced BBC feature documentary Fela. He was writing and directing an adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s Death and The King’s Horseman for Netflix before he died.
