''Fincho'' is a 1957

Nigerian Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was derived from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British jo ...

film by Sam Zebba, and the first Nigerian film to be shot in colour. The film deals with the titular character's attempts to make sense of the industrialization brought to

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

by European colonialists, the tension between tradition and innovation, and mechanization's threat to traditional labour. According to Zebba's self-published autobiography, the film was shot with Nigerian non-professional actors, and

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

dialogue dubbed by

students at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. The director contacted singer

Harry Belafonte Harry Belafonte ( ; born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte ...

, who agreed to record an introduction for the film. The score was written by Alexander Laszlo, including the theme ''Fincho Song'' - which Zebba wrote, and then sang accompanied by a small Mexican band.

References

External links

Finco
at ColonialFilm.org.uk * Nigerian drama films 1957 films Films shot in Nigeria Pidgin English-language films English-language Nigerian films 1950s English-language films Films scored by Alexander László {{Nigeria-film-stub