Life Turns Man Up & Down In production
OlongoAfrica presents  ·  A film by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

Life Turns
Man Up
and Down

A Marketplace of Life and Literature

Woodcut-style drawing of three running men in caps and shorts, from an Onitsha pamphlet cover
Documentary  ·  Nigeria / USA In production  ·  MMXXVI

A documentary film

What happens to a literature that never asked permission?

Watch the teaser Discover the film

Written and directed by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún.
Produced by OlongoAfrica.

The Film

A market town printed its own literature

They were not reviewed.
They were not taught.
They sold in tens of thousands. The pamphlet trade, c. 1947–1966

For about two decades either side of independence, the market town of Onitsha, on the eastern bank of the Niger, produced one of the most unusual publishing cultures of the twentieth century.

Clerks, traders, teachers and school-leavers wrote short books — romance, courtroom drama, political biography, advice on money and marriage — and had them printed on the same small presses that turned out invoices, handbills and funeral programmes. They were sold from stalls in the market for a few pence, and they were read by people who had never been the intended audience for a book.

The trade asked permission of nobody: not London, not the university, not anyone's idea of proper English. It made its own language, its own subjects and its own economics, and then it ended almost as quickly as it began.

Life Turns Man Up and Down follows the small number of people who kept the pamphlets when nobody else was keeping them, and asks what happened to the writing afterwards — including how the same town became, thirty years later, the engine of Nigeria's home-video industry, and what all of this says about the changing job of the writer in African society.

The Custodians

Whoever kept them decided what survived

Almost none of this literature was preserved by the institutions that preserve literature. What survives is here because particular people kept it — a dealer, two librarians, a scholar — and because the children of the writers remember what the catalogues do not.

Daughter & linguist

Uju Anya

Maryland

Her father, Udegbunem Anya, wrote for the market under three different names. She is a linguist herself — both a witness to the trade and an interpreter of it.

Bookseller

Kurt Thometz

Private librarian · New York

The collector whose shelves are the film's way in, and who has spent decades arguing that these pamphlets are literature.

Scholar

James Yeku

Kansas

On what a print culture becomes once it is scanned — what digitisation carries across, and what it quietly leaves behind.

Curator

Elspeth Healey

Kenneth Spencer Research Library
University of Kansas

Special collections curator, on how a Nigerian market trade ends up catalogued in the American Midwest.

Historian

Elizabeth MacGonagle

History · African & African-American Studies
University of Kansas

On what the pamphlets record that the official histories of the period do not.

Still to film

Scholar

Don Dodson

Santa Clara University

Interviewed scores of pamphlet writers, publishers, printers and readers in 1971, when the trade had a brief revival after the Nigerian Civil War. His wife Barbara appeared on the covers of several popular pamphlets.

Son

Georges Ekwensi

Nigeria

Eldest son of Cyprian Ekwensi, whose earliest books were printed and sold in this same trade before he became one of Nigeria's best-known novelists.

Writer

Chuma Nwokolo

Nigeria

A prolific writer of popular fiction, often measured against Ekwensi — and living proof that popular and serious were never opposites here.

Onitsha to Nollywood

Onookome Okome

University of Alberta

Professor of African literature and cinema, whose work runs the line from the market pamphlets to the video-film industry that followed.

This is not the whole cast. Other conversations are underway.

The Archive

Where the pamphlets live now

Alongside the film, OlongoAfrica holds eleven Onitsha pamphlets of its own — advice books, domestic melodrama, a political life of Jomo Kenyatta — catalogued title by title and scanned inside and out.

If you hold pamphlets, photographs of the market, or printers' records from the period, the film and the library would both like to hear from you.

Browse the collection →
Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet Never Trust All That Love You Never Trust All That Love YouAnonymous · 6th ed. Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet The Struggles and Trial of Jomo Kenyatta The Struggles and Trial of Jomo KenyattaThomas Iguh Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet The Nigerian Bachelor's Guide The Nigerian Bachelor's GuideF.A.O. Ude Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet Husband and Wife Who Hate Themselves Husband and Wife Who Hate ThemselvesAnonymous Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet How to Make Friends with Girls How to Make Friends with GirlsJ. Abiakam Cover of the Onitsha pamphlet A Wife on Bright Street A Wife on Bright StreetI.M. Egbujiobi

Six of eleven. Each cover opens its catalogue entry, with scans of the inside pages.

Production

Shooting log

The film is being shot across the United States and Nigeria. This log updates as filming moves.

Production stills →
New York Kurt Thometz — rare-book collector Filmed
Lawrence, Kansas Elspeth Healey & Elizabeth MacGonagle — Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Filmed
Minnesota Ronald P. Schaefer — professor of linguistics, and the donor of the OlongoAfrica Library's African linguistics journals Filmed
Maryland Uju Anya — linguist and professor; daughter of the pamphleteer Udegbunem Anya Filmed
San Francisco Don Dodson — scholar of the pamphlet trade Scheduled
Edmonton, Alberta Onookome Okome — from the pamphlets to Nollywood Scheduled
To be confirmed Onitsha & Lagos, Nigeria — the market, the presses, the families Planned
To be confirmed Post-production — edit, score, subtitling Planned

Get Involved

Three ways to help

You have pamphlets

Copies in a box, a wardrobe, a family library, a school store. Even a photograph of a cover is useful to us.

Write to us →

You are family to a writer

Many of the authors published under one name and lived under another. If a relative of yours wrote or printed for the market, we would like to record what you know.

Tell us about them →

You can support the film

The production is looking for funding partners, archival collaborators and festival and broadcast homes.

Start a conversation →

Filmmakers

Credits

Written & directed by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
Produced by OlongoAfrica
Associate producer Olajide Salawu
Advisors Karin Barber  ·  Georges Ekwensi  ·  Stephanie Newell  ·  Kurt Thometz
Cinematography by To be announced