Inside Kannywood: Nigeria's Muslim film industry - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
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This film industry has been coined Kannywood, after the city it originated in. According to statistics from the National Film and Video Censors Board, its movies make up about 30 percent of the films produced by the Nigerian-based film industry popularly called Nollywood, which is often portrayed as the third-largest in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Kannywood even has its own TV channel, Africa Magic Hausa, showing Hausa-language movies on satellite TV.
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Kannywood treats the viewer to a mishmash of cultural influences. Before the local film industry came into existence in the 1990s, northerners watched Hindi language films from India. The glamour of the Bollywood musicals has rubbed off on the Hausa movies, some of which feature singing and dancing.
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Their tone is devoutly Muslim, though, and quite often the very last line of the end credits is "Glory be to God". Many of these movies also denounce the hypocrisy of the ruling classes who preach piousness in public while sinning in private.
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They don't shy away from the problems women face in everyday life, such as forced marriage, sexual molestation, the lack of female education, and domestic violence - matters this society is not accustomed to discussing openly.
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It is hardly surprising that women, who for the first time see their own experiences reflected in the public domain, form a significant part of Kannywood's audience. They also play a considerable role in the industry itself. According to the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria, 75 percent of the Hausa movie actors are female, as is the case for two-thirds of the association's members - from singers and producers to actors and make-up artists.
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the Kano-based film industry is providing jobs and business to the city, something that went a long way towards improving public opinion of the profession.
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not more than 10 years ago, a moralistic backlash triggered by a sex scandal almost destroyed the local film industry. As is often the case in public fights about morality, the female body was the battleground.
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The Censorship Board came into existence before the scandal in 2001, and is a combined initiative of the local film industry and the state government. It was a response to the adoption of Islamic law in Kano a year earlier. Under the law, filmmaking was under threat of being abolished altogether. In order to avoid that, Kannywood voluntarily subjected itself to stricter censorship.
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stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules
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The overly zealous KSCB executive lost his moral authority when the police caught him in a compromising situation with a young girl in his car, and Kannywood celebrated when, in 2011, the newly elected governor appointed a new head of the Censorship Board.
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"We don't like to see body contact between men and women. No handshaking, let alone kissing," he says. "And no nudity or transparent dresses." The general secretary explains how things such as prostitution, lesbianism and adultery may be portrayed, as long as it is clear to the audience that they are unacceptable. Song and dance are permissible, as long as there is no physical contact between the sexes.
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"Filmmakers themselves understand they have a task to educate people and cannot go against society,"
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"It's the masses who watch Kannywood movies, not the elite. The general public is more ready for social change than political and religious leaders."