Zina Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of Nigerian environmentalist, poet, and human rights activist, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa. She was born in Nigeria in 1976. Zina is thriving in the media industry in the United Kingdom, where she resides with her siblings.
Zina Saro-Wiwa is a Brooklyn-based video artist and filmmaker. She creates experimental films, music videos, documentaries, and video installations.
The alt-Nollywood movement was founded by Saro-Wiwa, a filmmaker who uses the narrative, stylistic, and visual conventions of the Nollywood film industry for politically challenging and subversive purposes.
Her artistic work began as a BBC journalist, and she used art, cinema, and food to change the way the world saw Africa. One of her projects is New West African Kitchen, in which Saro-Wiwa reinvents West African food. Each feast also incorporates African video art presentations and a mini-lecture.
Saro-Wiwa was listed in The Times newspaper on March 22, 2011, as one of the top 25 African Renaissance leaders.
In 2017, an article published on Norient highlighted that Saro-Wiwa’s use of dubbing alt-Nollywood movies “subverts the narrative, stylistic, and visual conventions of the Nigerian cinema.”.
Zina’s late father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the author and poet, became a well-known Nigerian environmentalist and human rights activist. He was executed in 1995 by the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Zina was just 19 years old at the time, but given her young age, the father’s spirit and great intellect lived in her, though her great intellect has been used to tell African great stories and promote the great culture of the black race. She grew up in Surrey and Sussex in the UK, where Saro-Wiwa’s wife Maria and five children lived. She attended the private girls’ school Roedean in Sussex and the University of Bristol, where she studied economic and social history.
Looking For Transwonderland, a great book written by her twin sister Noo Saro-Wiwa and published by Granta, is a travelogue. Her older brother, Ken Wiwa, is the author of the memoir In the Shadow of a Saint.
All of them inherit their father’s traits, and now Late Ken will be beaming in the afterlife.
