Portal:African cinema/Page to screen/49
Kongi's Harvest is a 1970s Nigerian drama film directed by Ossie Davis. The film was adapted from a screenplay by Wole Soyinka's 1965 play of the same name. Produced by Francis Oladele's Calpenny Nigeria Films, it was the first production by a Nigerian indigenous company. The film revolves around the degeneration of personal rule in post-colonial Africa and satirizes the resulting tyranny reflected between a populist politician and a traditional ruler. The film was said to reflect the rising trend of authoritarian one-man regimes in Africa. Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright, poet, and the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, also starred in the leading role as the dictator of an African nation. At the time of the film's release, Soyinka dissociated himself from the film and denounced the changes that had been made to his screenplay.