Kannywood Came Before Nollywood

The generalisation of the Nigerian film industry as #Nollywood has caused the marginalisation of #Kannywood in national and international appreciation and documentation by both majority of Nigerians in the southern based English language Nollywood and their foreign followers , including the scholars; except for Brian Larkin, Carmen McCain and Jonathan Haynes whose comprehensive studies on the Hausa language Kannywood have done the best to address the widespread ignorance of Kannywood in southern Nigeria and foreign countries.

I am totally against any attempt to change the narrative of Nigerian film industry from a distorted perspective on the history of Nollywood by commission or omission.

The following fundamental facts must be documented.

° The label of Kannywood was formed before the label of Nollywood. ° The Hausa language film sector of the Nigerian film industry is not a subset of Nollywood, but independent and an established precedent for the documentation of the film culture and literature of northern Nigeria.

° Adamu Halilu became the first Nigerian indigenous filmmaker with the documentaries, "It Pays to Care" (1955) and "Hausa Village" (1958), (Nigerian Cinema In A Nutshell - TV/Movies - Nigeria http://www.nairaland.com/3535585/nigerian-cinema-nutshell)

° The first Hausa language home video, "Tirmin Danya " was produced in 1990 in Kano. When the National Film and Video Censorship Board, Abuja, started recording (and censoring) video films in Nigeria from 1995, a total of 1600 Hausa video films were officially documented between 1995 and 2005.
(http://kadunavoice.com/hausa-film-compatible-or-incompatible-with-islam-and-the-hausa-culture/.)

Recommended for further studies: "Nollywood, Kannywood, and a Decade of Hausa Film Censorship in Nigeria" | Carmen McCain - Academia.edu

Contact Brian Larkin at Barnard College, Columbia University and Carmen McCain at Kwara State University; Director, the Nollywood Project.


~ Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, Publisher Editor of the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series distributed worldwide by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Lulu and other booksellers.

https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima.