vice and videos 143trayed nudity to a certain degree” and that “the type of dressing and danc-
ing... contravenes the teachings of Islam and Hausa culture as well”
(I bra h i m 2007a).
As a consequence, major Kany wood production companies moved
their businesses to neighboring states, mostly Kaduna and Abuja, and
began to reorganize the industry from there (Ibrahim 2007b). Films were
shot outside Kano state, the rushes taken to Kano—where postproduction
could still be done—and the finished product was then taken outside the
state again for distribution. To avoid conflicts with the Kano State Cen-
sorship Board, films produced in this manner got a sticker reading “Not
for sale in Kano” (McCain 2013: 233). W hen the ban was lifted on Febru-
ary 12, 2008, many filmmakers, including Sa’idu Gwanja, chairman of the
Filmmakers’ Association, found the board’s new registration guidelines
far “too stringent to be complied with easily” (quoted in Ibrahim 2008).
Most were reluctant to register immediately, probably hoping that the new
guidelines would somehow ease in the future. Throughout 2008 and 2009,
however, the Kano State Censorship Board, through Director Abubakar
Rabo, called on filmmakers to “consider the Board as their partner in
progress, but not as their enemy,” did everything to prove that it intended
to live up to its task “to bring sanity into Kany wood” (quoted in Ibrahim
2 008). Pol ice ra ids of i ndust r y-related offices, st ud ios, a nd shops a s wel l a s
a series of arrests and hasty trials at a so-called mobile court—established
especially for the purposes of the Censorship Board—turned Rabo and
the filmmakers into fierce adversaries. In 2008 alone, about a thousand
people, mostly youth, were arrested and often convicted within an hour
without legal representation (McCain, Hausawa, and A lkanaw y 2009).
Among them were also two of the industry’s most prominent figures:
producer, director, and actor Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama and comedian
Rabilu Musa Danlasan. Iyan-Tama was arrested in May 2008 and was
accused of running his company without renewing its registration and
releasing his film Tsint siya (2008) in Kano state without the approval of
the Censorship Board. Ironically, a few days earlier the film—a transposi-
tion of the American musical We s t Side Stor y, sponsored by the American
Embassy—had won the award for best film in the category of “Social Is-
sue” at the Zuma Film Festival in Abuja. In Kano, a copy of the film fell
into the hands of the Censorship Board during a raid on a video shop.