Kannywood and lost opportunities, By Mo Sani Aliyu
Acting, cinema, movies, drama…
AREWA AGENDA – These words denote the art of using words and action to, chiefly entertain and pass messages to audiences the world over.
It is an ancient art form that all cultures have embraced.
Nigeria is not left out, being one of the nations with people from ancient civilizations and long history.
This morning, I want to talk about films or movies as the Americans like to call them.
In Nigeria, we have two distinct film groups – Nollywood and Kannywood, (some people call them “industries” but I beg to differ).
I want to talk about Kannywood – a loose association of “actors” and home video producers, mainly from the northern part of the country who have congregated mostly in Kano (hence Kannywood), and produce home videos that Nigerians like to call films.
First off, there is such a thing as a movie, so loosely speaking, all the dramas Kannywood churns out are technically “movies”.
But in reality, Kannywood “produces” (I use this word very loosely here), low quality home videos that anyone with a decent quality smartphone can shoot.
Scripting has remained abysmally poor. Soon as you start watching a Kannywood home video, you’ll quickly realize that it’s either a poor rehash of a famous Indian movie storyline, or a very predictable “plot” like boy sees girl, (boy means a forty something year-old Ali Nuhu in the role of a young university graduate just returning from America), boy likes girl and wants to marry her, a problem appears to scuttle the relationship (a rich guy). The plot collapses and the video ends abruptly with the badly spelled words “Alhamdullah”, leaving the viewer confused as to what he or she just watched.
Several other annoyances can be found, but let’s not behave like a typical Kannywood offering.
Next I want to talk about the labels being pinned on the actors of these Kannywood home videos.
The world over, famous movie actors are called film or movie stars. The translation of the word “star” in Hausa is “tauraro” for the masculine version or “tauraruwa” for the feminine version of the word, since Hausa words have both genders represented. “Taurari” is the plural for the word “star”.
Instead of a male actor to be referred to as “tauraron fim” or “tauraruwar fim” for their female counterparts, they are being wrongly labeled as “jarumin fim” and jarumar fim”.
Why is this wrong, you ask?
Well “jarumi” simply means a warrior. And in popular usage, even in dramas, a warrior is seen as the good guy, who usually ends up defeating the bad guys.
In Hausa we call the good guy “akto”, or “afto” culled from the word “actor”. The bad guy is called the “boss”.
So calling an actor “jarumi” is not really wrong. Calling all actors “jarumai” certainly is. An actress or actor, is defined by the role she or he has played in a movie, hence if he played the role of a protagonist, he may be labeled as a “boss”.
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My point is this: simply call all famous actors “taurarin fim”, and all other yet to become famous actors as ‘yan fim.
In many other cultures, the word “star” is used to refer to famous film actors, certainly not the word “warrior”. I am yet to come across this term in any of the many languages I have researched while writing this long piece.
But if anyone has any examples, please share them in the comments section.
Here is how famous actors (film or movie stars) are referred to in some select countries:
Arabic: نـَجْمٌ سِينمائيّ
French: vedette de cinéma
Spanish: estrella de cine
Brazilian Portuguese: astro de cinema.
Danish: filmstjerne
Dutch: filmster
Turkish: film yıldızı
Romanian: star de cinema
All these languages use words that translate directly to “star” in English.
Lights, camera, action!
In my opinion, Kannywood has been left behind largely because of the ascendancy of poor quality acting and production. People who have no training, no acting or production antecedents other than the desire to “be famous” or “make a quick buck”, have taken over, which explains why the videos they produce never make any serious mark in a multi-billion dollar enterprise.
Even with the advent of animation and AI, Kannywood is still stuck in its infancy.
Recently, I have noticed some Kannywood producers have turned to producing television series, which shows they are now mentally tied to the apron strings of Indian TV channels like Zee World and Star Life. This is down from copying real Bollywood movies to copying Indian television dramas who are seen as second rate or third rate productions in India.
While Bollywood is making billion rupee movies every year, Kannywood has now taken several steps back and is now producing copies of second rate Indian TV dramas.
The worst aspect for me, is that the stories Kannywood tells have not evolved. They are still about boy meets girl. In today’s world, there are certainly more serious matters Kannywood can and must explore.
The solution must start with education. People like Ali Nuhu, Sani Danja and Sani Mu’azu should have risen beyond the simple roles of producing new actors, whose “production companies” are glorified recruitment agencies for aspiring actors.
Guys like them should have teamed up to set up institutions to train aspiring actors in writing scripts, acting and producing movies.
They should copy from the Indians they so slavishly follow. Actresses like Rahma Sadau who had a chance to feature in Hollywood movies some years back. Instead, she has also now chosen to go the Indian way, while Indian film stars like Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padikone, Ranveer Singh, the veterans like Anupam Kher and Dev Patel have been steadily making their way over to Hollywood and are gaining universal acceptance.
The role of religious clerics who condemn the acting profession wholesale, also contribute to the problems Kannywood faces, while on the other hand, countries with strict Islamic laws like Saudi Arabia and Iran both have thriving movie industries.
Someone (me in sha Allah), will help introduce Kannywood producers to using Artificial Intelligence to produce scripts and innovative stories for the next era of Kannywood movies.
Kannywood needs a fresh start. Let’s come together and do this. Anyone interested?
