viii Acknowledgments and Pr eface
Abdulkadir Maje, and Kabiru Maje. In this neighborhood, I was in no way
the only Bature, as “Europeans” are called in northern Nigeria. In fact, I
shared this “field full of researchers”—as Katja Werthmann, among them,
once called it in retrospect—with numerous others, including Douglas
Anthony, Conerly Casey, Rudi Gaudio, Jan-Patrick Heiß, Alaine Hutson,
Tae-Sang Jang, Brian Larkin, Esther Morgenthal, and Jonathan Reynolds.
I thank all of them for the many lively discussions we had which enriched
my more general knowledge of Nigeria and Hausaland in particular.
In 2003, I returned to Kano for a research project on Hausa video film,
which I carried out under the auspices of the Forschungskolleg Medien
und Kulturelle Kommunikation at the University of Cologne. During
my fieldwork on Kanywood, Ahmed S. Alkanawy assisted me in many
ways, most notably by connecting me to his numerous friends and ac-
quaintances in the Hausa movie “industry.” Among them, I am especially
indebted to Abdulkareem Mohammed, chairman of the Moving Pictures
Practitioners Association of Nigeria (moppan), and to the filmmakers
‘Dan Azumi Baba, Ishaq Sidi Ishaq, Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, and Ibra-
him Mandawari. Shu’aibu Idris Lilisco and Aminu Bizi taught me what it’s
like to act in front of a camera by casting me in minor roles in their movies
Salam Salam and Jinjirai 99, respectively. Abdalla Uba Adamu inspired
me through his own research and prolific writing on Hausa films, and
his generous sharing of information helped me to keep track of the latest
developments in Kany wood in subsequent years. The same holds true for
Ibrahim Sheme and Carmen McCain, without whose blogs I would never
have been able to follow up on the censorship crisis after 2007.
I am also indebted to Brian Larkin, whose work on media in north-
ern Nigeria has inspired my own and who was kind enough to share his
knowledge and experiences with me on several occasions. In Cologne,
colleagues at the Forschungskolleg facilitated my initiation into the world
of film and media studies—among them Friedrich Balke, Ilka Becker,
Gereon Blaseio, Michael Cuntz, Cornelia Epping-Jäger, Gisela Fehrmann,
Erika Linz, Frank Thomas Meyer, Jens Ruchatz, Gabriele Schabacher,
Leander Scholz, Erhard Schüttpelz, and Brigitte Weingart.
My research on the appropriation of foreign media in Tanzania began
in 2006, when I visited Dar es Salaam for the first time during a short
reconnaissance trip. I returned for longer stays in 2007 and 2009, and