This is Kannywood

In light of the recent brouhaha, this series of photos is in honour of Kannywood and the many hardworking and talented actors, directors, script writers, cameramen, makeup artists, costumiers, welfare folks, producers, editors, songwriters, singers, dancers, etc. who have, with very little high tech equipment or funding aside from the mostly Kano market to which they sell, created a thriving film industry.

It was July 2006. We were on the set of Abbas Sadiq's film Albashi 3 in a garden/park in Kano commonly used as a film set. There were three other movies being shot there that day. At one point there was a loud uproar and every one left their scenes and rushed over to a corner of the garden where there was much shouting and trading of insults. What had happened, I was told later, was that some "politicians" had come into the garden trying to "pick up" some of the actresses, who would have nothing to do with them. The "politicians" then started shouting at the male actors and saying that they were all homosexuals--look at how they were shaped like women. One of the older actors, who had been praying in a small mosque in the garden, came out and gave the men a piece of his mind, and then the rest of the actors came rushing over in a mass of solidarity--insulting the "politicians" with great zest. Everyone came back to do the next scene gleefully laughing at particularly sweet insults that had been traded and ranting about hypocrisy and sleazy big men.