The Learner

By  Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com Nigeria’s diversity cuts across many things, chiefly cultures, ethnicities, religions and regions. Although several commentators consider the northern part more Islamic and the southern one more Christian, Muslims and Christians, followers of traditional belief systems and non-religious folks may be seen everywhere. Due to these complexities, the country is home to two significant film industries – Kannywood and Nollywood – with many smaller ones operating under these brands. Kannywood , the name given to the “local” Hausa film industry with Kano State as its epicentre, is a distinct and autonomous film industry in northern Nigeria.   Nollywood   has its root s  in the South, has mainly Christianity and Western-influenced motifs as themes and produces films primarily in English or other southern Nigerian languages. For Kannywood, however, Islam is arguably the trademark, and the East remains their vital source of influence ...

The following is my interview with the Blueprint newspaper (Nigeria) on writing, reading and related issues. You may see it on their website or the print edition of 30.01.2021, page 25. Thank you. How did your amity with writing start? What triggered it? Writing is, often, a result of reading. I started reading novels by, usually, Nigerian authors in 1999. However, I wondered why couldn’t I find books by northern Nigerian writers? There were only a very few of them such as Zaynab Alkali ( The Stillborn , The Virtuous Woman , etc.), Muhammad Sule ( The Undesirable Element ) and Auwal Yusuf Hamza ( Love Path ) in the market or the one I went to. I vowed to become a writer to tell our stories.   How was it honed? You hone your writing skills by reading and practising writing. I think there is no other better way. I read a lot, mostly when I was younger; when I had less engagement and responsibilities. I didn’t have any specific favourite genre. I read almost whatever came my...

  Nollywood Movie Review: VOICELESS   Director: Robert O. Peters Producer: Rogers Ofime Company: Native Media Writer: Jennifer Agunloye Year: November 18, 2020 Cast: Asabe Madaki, Yakubu Muhammad, Sani Muazu, Uzee Usman, Abba Zaki, Rakiya Atta, introducing Adam Garba, others.    Indisputable, only a few Kannywood productions attract the attention of the audience these days. Although the dialogue track and the actors in Voiceless are Hausa, the film does not belong to Kannywood. The movie, on the one hand, mounts a frigging assault, on the other hand, a serious challenge, to Kannywood. Though it’s unfair to match the glory of Nollywood and that of Kannywood, I can feel it in my bones that they must envy Nollywood for punching them and knocking their teeth out by producing the first wholly Hausa film that is now sold to Netflix. Here’s my review of the film.   Voiceless is an insurgency-inspired romantic-thriller motivated by the infamous ...

Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin200@gmail.com Kannywood film industry faces an existential threat from many fronts. A leading Hausa film scholar, Prof. Abdullah Uba Adamu declared last year that “ by 2016, the Hausa film industry had literally crashed ” and, therefore, major actors in the production, marketing and distributing its films had pulled out and ventured into other more propitious businesses. His declaration was true. We are already in the middle of the year 2018. As an independent, casual promoter and reviewer of their films, however, I have yet to watch any serious movie  worth reviewing. Most of the few, released films so far are poor in many respects, while the good ones are still held for fear of the market. I don’t blame them for this. Love or hate them, the resilience of Kannywood filmmakers is what makes them survive this far, though, as mentioned above, many have already capitulated and closed shop. The reasons for this turn of the event are somewhat apparent. T...

By Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com University of Cologne The Hausa version of this article, with a slight difference, was published on the BBC Hausa  website. According to numerous accounts and lived experiences, rivalry is natural among both humans and animals. It is barely, if at all, avoidable especially between contemporaries. It becomes more probable when one of the lots becomes way more successful than the rest. Mr A may begin to envy Mr B and question why he is luckier or more much-admired than I. In response, Mr B may start feeling pompous, declaring to all that he is ahead of Mr A. Therefore his accolades and achievement are due to his hard work and talent. Again, the people around the two are sometimes yet another cause of the enmity. For one reason or another, they do all it takes to plant a seed of dissonance as they profit by getting favour from either person. There are more causes for strife, but I guess these are very typical. In Kannywood, th...

By Muhsin Ibrahim University of Cologne   muhsin2008@gmail.com As I wrote elsewhere, the relationship between cinema and the orthodox religious institutions is often marked by uneasiness if not outright hostility. From its very beginning, the Puritans see the raison d’être of visual art as only to entertain, which means to distract people from their duty to God and ethical undertakings. Until today, the accusation is all the more raging. How filmmakers handle the questions of morality, culture and spirituality is under censorship. Kannywood, the Kano-based, up-and-coming motion picture industry of and by the predominantly Muslim Hausa speaking people in northern Nigeria, is not an exception. It is not news that Kannywood struggles with the culture-war message of several critics who see everything with them as corruption or dilution of the “prestigious” Hausa culture. However, with the ever-expanding rise (encroachment?) of globalisation, I think this feeling is, a...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Bayero University, Kano @muhsin234 (Twitter) Introduction As students of Theatre and Film Studies here in India, we watch drama and films from across the globe, and of all genres. We encounter no hurdle or trouble in getting the movies as the internet has today simplified much access to them, broken many boundaries to any nation, any community, and any film industry except in a few cases. I must, however, admit that only very little is known about Africa or the films produced therein. Despite this, I often ‘boast’ saying my country, Nigeria, is the most populous African country, and its film industry is the third-biggest in the world. But a snag comes up when asked to bring forward the films; I couldn’t, for I shouldn’t just give them any films, for Nigeria’s being a unique country due to its sharp cultural and ethno-religious divide between the North and the South. This becomes necessary because the perceived national films do have little or no bear...