Femi Odugbemi, the Nigerian-born internationally celebrated filmmaker, storyteller media content producer and speaker was born on May 24, 1963 in Lagos, South West Nigeria. He is currently Managing Director/CEO of ZURI24 Media, a content production and management company.
He is a co-Founder/Executive Director of the Foundation of the Promotion of Documentary Film in Africa, otherwise known as the iREPRSENT Documentary Film Forum, organisers of the 13-year-old West Africa leading annual International documentary film Festival, iREP.
Femi is also a past Academy Director of Multichoice Talent Factory as well as a past President of the Independent Television Producers Association of Nigeria (ITPAN).
He was recently elected as a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, organisers of the New York-based International Emmy® Awards and the International Emmy® Kids Awards @ Mip. And since 2018, he has been a Voting Member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) – of the OSCARS; a status he shares with very few highly revered members of the Nigerian motion picture family. He is one of few on the Africans continent to vote in both Oscars and Emmy academies.
Trained in Film & TV Production at Montana State University, Bozeman, United States, Femi is a multiple award-winning writer, producer/director and photographer, who is widely respected for his creativity and professionalism. He is among the few admen that have been inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in Nigeria.
After graduation, he worked for a couple of years as a Producer at KUSM Channel 9 TV station in Bozeman, Montana. Since he returned home in the mid-80s, he has worked for decades in the Nigerian motion picture industry; creating and producing several critically-acclaimed entertainment programmes for television and radio.
A renowned name in advertising and marketing communications in Nigeria, having directed memorable television advertising for many of Nigeria’s blue-chip multi-national companies, he worked as Film & Radio Producer at Lintas Advertising, Associate Creative Director at STB-McCann and later as Managing Director, Audio Visual First (AVF), Lagos. In these places, he wrote, directed, and produced several notable documentaries, dramas and commercials for such multi-national concerns as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestle, Cadbury, Beecham, Rekkit-Benckister, MTN, CELTEL and many other FMCG marketers. He is one of the few admen inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in Nigeria.
Reminiscing on his early days as an adman, Femi tells a captivating story of his early encounters with Mr. Chris Doghudje, the then managing director of Lintas: Lagos. He says:
“When I did the interview for the job at Lintas, it was in the chairman’s office. Throughout the interview, Mr. Doghudje did not say a word. He was sitting with a pen and paper and rolling it. Ted Mukoro was the one asking the questions. So when I later went to collect my appointment letter, I was directed to see the MD. I entered his office and for the first time realized that Mr. Doghudje was the MD.
“He said to me: ‘Look, let me be honest with you. All this your hair, wanna, gonna, thing that you are doing, here, this is Lintas. We live and die by results. Do you know what that means? Results!’. I said, Yes Sir. He said, ‘We will give you three months. In that three months, if we do not get results, consider yourself fired. We won’t even have a conversation.’
“When I started work, I avoided Mr. Doghudje like a plague. When they give me a brief I give myself only a few hours to address it. Mr. Doghudje uses white memo pad. When I see a white memo pad, instantly I address it.
“One day when they told me Doghudje wanted to see me, my heart was beating fast. When I got there, Doghudje said, ‘Yankee dudu, I understand you saved us today at Nigerian Breweries, You got it done. And I like it. Keep it up. I just wanted you to know. ‘”
Since 1999, Femi has worked as an Independent Producer/Director. His screen credits include ”Like Father, Like Son” (a TV sitcom), ”Who Do You Love?” (SFH talkshow), ”Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” (Nigeria’s most popular gameshow), the recent ”Lagos Lottery TV Gameshow,” the international documentary ”Life in Lagos”(2002) for CFI in France, ”Our Voodoo”(2005), ”Bar Beach Blues”(2004), a short drama which won best short film at the Zuma Film festival, ”Metamorphosis” (2006), and “Maroko” (2006), a full-length feature, and many more.
He has also produced ”Mama Put” a New Direction short film and also a documentary titled ”Ibadan – Cradle of Literati,” among others. Femi was Content Producer of the first-ever Soap-opera commissioned by MNET in sub-Saharan Africa titled ”TINSEL.” Following Tinsel, he has produced a series of television soaps for Africa Magic Showcase, including Battleground, Brethren and Movement JAPA. His latest offering for the Africa Magic Showcase is Covenant, which debuted on October 3.
From 2003 to 2006, when Femi served as the President of ITPAN, he worked assiduously to create international platforms of collaborations and cooperation amongst motion picture practitioners within the African continent. Persuaded that many professionals in Africa face the same professional and environmental challenges of technology, budgeting, audience development, and distribution, he has demonstrated commitment to nurturing corporate access into the entertainment industry as a way of addressing global imbalances in skills and resources.
Femi also chaired the Lagos International Forum on Cinema, Motion Picture and Video in Africa, an annual film event in the 2000s, designed to invite international attention to the opportunities and potentials of the motion picture industry in Africa. The last such Forum, held at the Lagos Business School, Lekki, Lagos in July 2006, attracted participants from France, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and all the countries in the West African Sub-region.
In 2005 Femi Odugbemi was a featured speaker at both the Africa Business Conference of the Harvard Business School, Boston, and the World Cinema Festival/Sithengi Market in Capetown South Africa.
Between 2005 and 2022, he has written, directed and/or produced many works of highly rated value with international recognitions. Among these are eight feature films, three short films, five TV drama series broadcast on the DSTV Africa Magic channels in 40 countries and 17 documentaries, working with four production companies.
Also between 2017 and 2021, he was the Director of the Multichoice Talent Factory (West Africa), an academy that attracts talented young Africans who receive top-notch practical and theoretical training in filmmaking from scholars and practitioners from across the world. The creative energy deployed at the Academy extends the frontier of African storytelling, built around global standards in filmmaking, and studio and content development technology. Graduates of the Academy receive a certificate jointly issued by the Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos.
He is one of the mentors that guided young African filmmakers in the recent NETFLIX/UNESCO pan African folktales project tagged African Folktales Reimagined
Femi is also a leading in creative events that promote African creativity, culture and diversity and has also participated in many awards across the continent. Currently he is the head of jury for the 2023 edition of the popular Africa Magic Viewers Choice Award (AMVCA), a position he is holding for a record fifth time.
A passionate believer in promoting African culture through authentic storytelling, he strongly advocates that Africans should take the driving seat and be telling African stories by themselves and from their own perspectives while projecting the rich African cultural heritage and diversity,
Hear him:
“I am passionate about the power of stories, well-told, to persuade, provoke and mediate human experiences. Stories sustain cultures. Stories inspire change. Stories impact governance, development, business, commerce, education, technology and innovation. That conviction motivates my quest for excellence and effectiveness as a storyteller, filmmaker and Content Producer across the spectrum of development and corporate communications, general entertainment, documentaries and feature films. I seek to create visually powerful stories in traditional and digital spaces that are not only different but make a difference.”
His work as a Producer/Director aspires to be challenging, innovative, and different. His goal is to explore to its fullest, the vast potentials of this creative craft to thrive, enrich, educate and entertain.
