Fela, il mio dio vivente

On 12th August I997, an enormous crowd packs every inch of a large square in Lagos, Nigeria. Ten days earlier, singer Fela Kuti, the king of Afrobeat and a spiritual guide for millions, passed away. Now his people want to say goodbye. Present with his camera to capture the event is Italian director Michele Avantario, who in that unique musician had discovered a living god, a human, intellectual and religious reference point.

COMMENTARY
Daniele Vicari elaborates on the material featuring Nigerian musician Fela Kuti (1938-1997) that was filmed by Michele Avantario, the pioneering videomaker who died in 2003, who had intended to make a film about Kuti. Vicari uses the voice of Claudio Santamaria to reconstruct two universes: on one hand, Renato Nicolini’s extravagant Rome of the late 1970s; on the other, the life of musical genius Fela Kuti, and the world of African funk and jazz. Kuti attracted a white man into his magical and spiritual world, but at the same time trusted him unquestionably. The result is a multi-levelled story, picaresque when describing Fela’s Italian tour, touching when it covers his death.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In his notes, Michele Avantario describes Fela Kuti as a controversial individual, a man of enormous charisma and talent, and even goes so far as to publicly call him “my living god”. The film has a classical linear narrative, but it is not a traditional documentary; it does not recount the life of a great figure of the 20th century, but rather the story of a fundamentally simple man who got lost in a world bigger than him. It is the story of when Michele met his true self, in the form of an amazing musician and man of a thousand contradictions, in an Africa that, despite being conquered by Western armies, fundamentally, remains unknown, unexplored and indomitable.