The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
If Alfons Adetuyi — a Sudbury Secondary graduate turned internationally renowned filmmaker — has his way, he’ll be back in Sudbury as early as next year to start shooting the second film in what he calls his ‘Africa Trilogy.’
“I guess I could give you some hints (about the new film),” Adetuyi said in a recent interview with The Star. He says the film is set around a particular event in 1971 and is called Dreams of the Moon. “So maybe you have to find out what happened in Sudbury in 1971,” he said while laughing.
In July 2010, Adetuyi returned to Sudbury for the first time in many years to direct the first film in his trilogy, High Chicago, which was written by his brother Robert and produced by his other brothers, Amos and Tom.
High Chicago is set in a small mining town in 1975 and follows the story of a man who’s a gambler, drinks a little too much and has given up on a dream he hatched while serving in the navy: to build drive-in movie theatres in Africa.
“Then all of sudden something happens to him much later on — when he’s got kids and a wife — and he decides he’s going to pick up on that dream.”
Although the film is set in Michigan, Sudbury was the true inspiration for the film and Adetuyi said he always planned on filming it here.
“It was always Sudbury. It’s a place that I knew well and I understood how those scenes would play out and the kind of areas in the city that could be used.”
Aside from one scene shot at a drive-in movie theatre in Oakville, the entire film was shot locally, and even used the NORC AT training mines for some of the underground scenes, Adetuyi said.
“(The films) all have a core-centre around Sudbury because, in fact, that’s where my dad immigrated to from Nigeria.”
“It’s a semi-autobiographical … inspired true story,” Adetuyi said. “It’s really the story of my dad.”
Adetuyi’s father came to Sudbury in 1947 and was one of the first West-Afr icans to immigrate to Canada, according to the film-maker.
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