Oguta Island
Oguta Island Film
We are pleased to make the film of Oguta Island available for free. The public release is on Friday, September 18, 2020. Please scroll to the bottom of this page and click the “Play” button on the image of the video.
Oguta Island, written by Nnamdi Kagana, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s late romances. As readers and viewers have long recognized, however, the play contains a deep and troubling look at the evils of colonization.
Oguta Lake is an actual location in Nigeria about 8 hours east and slightly south of Lagos. The filmmaker, Nnamdi Kanaga, grew up in Lagos, and has visited Oguta Lake. He enjoyed the beautiful forest surroundings of the lake, but also sadly witnessed the deforestation, pollution, and general degradation resulting from the exploitation of the natural resources. Noting especially that the profits from this exploitation tended to benefit foreign companies, rather than local people, Kanaga wanted to tell the story of Oguta.
This is a story about how colonizers in Nigeria exploited both humans and nature.
Adaptations of Classical Texts
Adaptions of older classical works has been going on for millennia. The insights that writers provide in their own time often carry over and are re-imagined by subsequent generations, and each new adaptation provides a fresh perspective.
Shakespeare himself often based his plays on stories he had read or seen performed, and adapting Shakespeare’s storylines is likewise a popular endeavor—consider works as diverse as West Side Story (based Romeo and Juliet), Throne of Blood (Macbeth), and Station Eleven (King Lear).
It is true that playwrights often have adapted The Tempest into modern versions of plays and movies to illustrate the evils of colonialism, such as Aime Cesaire’s Une Tempete. What Kanaga brings to the table with his adaptation of Oguta Island is the contamination and abuse of natural resources and degradation of the environment in Africa.
