Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is turning his attention to one of Nigeria’s most distinctive popular-literature movements with Life Turns Man Up and Down, a documentary about the Onitsha Market Literature trade. Written and directed by the Nigerian linguist, writer and filmmaker and produced by OlongoAfrica, the film explores the pamphlet culture that flourished in Onitsha roughly between 1947 and 1966, when traders, clerks, teachers and school-leavers produced stories about romance, money, politics, courtroom drama and everyday life for readers outside the traditional literary establishment.

The documentary follows the people and institutions that preserved this largely overlooked literary history, including Uju Anya, whose father Udegbunem Anya wrote under three pseudonyms, private librarian Kurt Thometz, whose collection anchors the film, and scholars James Yeku, Elspeth Healey and Elizabeth MacGonagle. It also traces the relationship between Onitsha’s pamphlet culture and the later rise of Nigeria’s home-video industry. Filming has taken place in New York, Lawrence, Kansas and Maryland, with production set to move to Onitsha and Lagos, while OlongoAfrica is also building a companion archive of Onitsha pamphlets.

The project follows Túbọ̀sún’s earlier documentary Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, which examined Wole Soyinka’s life and memory through the University of Ibadan bungalow where the Nobel laureate lived and worked and was arrested in 1967. Written and directed by Túbọ̀sún and shot by Tunde Kelani, the 2024 film grew out of Túbọ̀sún’s 2018 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and has been acquired by several major university African Studies collections. His new film continues this interest in recovering literary histories through places, archives and the people who preserve them. Life Turns Man Up and Down is currently inviting people with Onitsha pamphlets, photographs, printers’ records or family connections to pamphlet writers to contribute to the project.

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