Cinema
Shaihu Umar
Adamu Halilu · 1976
Synopsis
Students ask their old teacher where he comes from. Umar tells his story. With his father dead and his stepfather banished, he is separated from his mother; he is sold, taken from hand to hand across the country, tested in every way, until an Arab merchant, Abdulkarim, adopts him as a son instead of keeping him as a slave. He learns the Koran and becomes an imam. A dream then decides him to find his mother again.
Context
The Federal Film Unit of Kaduna produced this two-hour-twenty-minute feature for the Federal Ministry of Information, as the country's official contribution to the World Festival of Black Arts in Lagos in 1977. It is the largest undertaking in Nigerian cinema up to that point. It draws on a book by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the country's first head of government and himself the son of a slave, a story already staged in Zaria. Long thought lost, it resurfaced in 2016 when its negative was found in the storerooms of the national film corporation, which supported its restoration together with the German embassy.
Who it is for
Two hours twenty in Hausa, with English subtitles. The story moves by flashbacks from the old master's lesson. It is best to know that slavery was then practised in the region itself.
Prizes and reception
The very first film in Hausa, the most widely spoken language in West Africa. Reconstructed in 2018 by the Arsenal in Berlin, it was shown in the Berlinale Forum the same year.