Filmmaking has always been on his heart and when he moved to America he served as a production assistant on movies and television shows around Boston, Massachusetts eventually directing and coproducing a few short movies.
He summed up his experiences in his memoir, On Holy Pilgrimage: A Long Journey For Freedom. Rahman Oladigbolu had battled a seven-year illness recovering and relocating to the U.S for a fresh start.
Oladigbolu received serious attention when he released his first feature film, ‘In America: The Story of the Soul Sisters’, a story about a Nigerian medical student in America as an undocumented immigrant and an Africa-American woman searching for her identity as a Black woman in America.
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The film won Boston’s prestigious “Best Emerging Filmmaker Award” at the Roxbury International Film Festival, as well as “The 2010 Artist Award” at the American Islamic Congress, a multicultural and inter-faith organization headquartered in Washington DC.
Soul Sister also won the award for “Best Film for an African Abroad” at the 2011 African Movie Academy Award (AMAA). The movie also received screening at film festivals and cultural institutes around the world, including the Cannes’ Pan-African Film festival as well as on campuses across the United States.
The Quincy College and Harvard University graduate wrote, produced and directed his first feature film. He’s completed production of his second feature film ‘Theory of Conflict’, based on conflict that erupted on a Boston area college campus between pro-Jewish and pro-Palestinian students. He’s currently in development of a new film, an adaptation of a story authored by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the religious conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria termed “A Private Experience.”
Oladigbolu – the soaring filmmaker – will be in session for the March 6, 2020 Africa Day gala set for the UMass Boston Campus center as a keynote speaker. Thoughts will be picked on how to address the challenges to Pan-Africanism: Afrophoboia and Migration within and across Africa’s borders.
