Photo Documentation by Emmanuel Nwafor
It was a privilege to partake in a six-week Moving Image Residency at padà - a wonderful cultural and community-focused institution, nestled in a historic and vibrant corner of Lagos Island, Nigeria.
My time there was spent deep in research, tracing the multi-faceted lineages of storytelling within Nigeria, focusing on the history of film within the country and how this connects to traditional mediums of ‘mythmaking’ (particularly within the Yoruba cultural and traditional contexts), as well as the ways storytelling reaches audiences across the nation - past, present and future.
This work culminated in a screening of Jean-Marie Téno’s “Lieux Saints” - a case study Burkinabe film shot in the shadows of FESPACO - exploring how cinema can be a pillar for integrated community building. The film was followed by a free focus group including Lagosian filmmakers, producers and other actors in the space.
Visual comparison: Archival image of the old Royal Cinema on Joseph Harden Street (now Mobolaji Bank Anthony/Broad Street), which would overlook the two clock towers at the Colonial Secretariat on Marina Road between 1930-1960. The cinema has since been demolished but the view of the old secretariat from a similar vantage point remains.
One key highlight of this residency was the ability to apply my research beyond the ‘studio’ or workspace and instead move through Lagos Island by adopting a form of ‘walking cartography’, partly inspired by the work of researcher Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi and the exploratory ‘open-world’ concepts of video games like The Witcher or Ghost of Tsushima. This allowed me to map and plot real places and spaces in current time, and then, connect these physical locations with historical, speculative or conceptual reflections - thus engaging with archives and the hyper-local community in a multi-sensory and multi-temporal fashion.
Accompanied by members of the padà team, we walked a course through time and space, making several stops from the historic Glover Memorial Hall and Tafawa Balewa Square to more humble, local screening clubs on Campos and Berkley Street, uncovering legacies of story telling and observing the varied ways Lagosians have and continue to engage with film and the moving image.
The residency took place over six weeks, from May to June 2026.
A handycam still-shot of ‘Waka Club’ on Campos Street, taken during the walking tour of Lagos Island.