Hausa-language film grew from radio and television drama in Kaduna in the 1960s. In 1990 the film Turmin Danya was a commercial success, and the 1990s saw a boom in video films on cassette, then on discs, made at low cost and sold across northern Nigeria and neighbouring countries. The industry came to be centred in Kano, and the name Kannywood, a blend of Kano and Hollywood, was coined in 1999.
Kannywood films mix local storytelling, family drama and comedy with songs and dance, and the influence of Indian cinema, which has been popular in northern Nigeria for decades, is clear in the music and in plots of love and family honour. Brian Larkin’s study of media in Kano shows why Indian films became so popular there: their stories of family, love and tradition seemed closer to local life than Hollywood’s.
The industry has also lived with regulation. Kano State set up a Censorship Board in 2001 to review films, and the 2000s saw several confrontations: a campaign against some productions in 2003, and in 2007, after a scandal involving a private video, a harsh crackdown that included arrests of film workers and the public burning of confiscated materials. More recently, in 2019, a director and a musician were arrested for releasing songs without approval.
Sources for this article
- Larkin 2008, chapters on cinema and media in Kano
- Unsigned overview (n.d.), section “Kannywood and the Cinema of Censorship” (outline)