Taking on Kantawaye with Hajiya Umma Ali

The first week of November, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Association of [Hausa] Women Film Producers led by producer Hajiya Umma Ali. The association had formed years ago but after a period of inactivity, these women, including Hajiya Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, Hajiya Gadaza, Hajiya Hajara Usman, and Hajiya Aisha Halidu were […]

The first week of November, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Association of [Hausa] Women Film Producers led by producer Hajiya Umma Ali. The association had formed years ago but after a period of inactivity, these women, including Hajiya Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, Hajiya Gadaza, Hajiya Hajara Usman, and Hajiya Aisha Halidu were reconvening, determined, this time, to connect to each other and strengthen the position of women producers in the film industry. On November 8, I spoke to Hajiya Umma Ali in Hausa about her experiences in film. (Any errors in translation are mine.)
Hajiya Umma narrated how she became interested in film as a housewife, explaining that before she became involved in Hausa films she watched more Indian films than Hausa films. “But, I saw that the Hausa film industry was a good profession, so I said, kai, let me get involved with this opportunity. At the time that I started [1997], there weren’t other women producing only men. I told my husband I wanted to start doing film. He said he didn’t have a problem, except that he knew there would be gossip because people say women in film are prostitutes. I said as long as he didn’t mind, I wasn’t worried about gossip. He said that he was willing for me to start producing.” Fortunately, Hajiya Umma has not experienced the gossip her husband feared, “I’ve never had a problem. Maybe they’ve done it, but they’ve never done it in front of me.” She feels that it is important that women go into film in part because they can tell stories men can’t. “Women write better stories than men. They know better the sorts of things that will happen inside the house.”
Hajiya Umma has so far produced four films: Kaddara Ta Riga Fata 1,2, 3, and Roma Rogo. “The first I did around 1997. Roma Rogo I did it almost 8 years ago. I haven’t done any more because we weren’t happy how that one turned out. They really cheated us. Up till today they haven’t finished paying us the money that is owed us from the market.”
These negative experiences with film are one of the reasons she wants to re-connect women producers in one strong association. “Back then we had a group for women producers. I was the leader. It’s been about 5 to 7 years since we’ve done anything. But things have progressed and we want to come back and search out and recruit new women producers. That’s why we said let’s call a meeting to sit down and discuss our profession, so that we can advance. If problems come along, an association would be useful.” She hopes that women who “enter our association will be enlightened. We want to warn them about the way we were taken advantage of back then. We don’t want to be cheated anymore. We want all the new women producers to join together with us.”
The problem, she said, was that women who were new to the profession were often taken advantage of by those who saw they didn’t know the ropes.  “There is a word ‘kantawaye’ [a slang roughly translated as ‘before she catches on’] “Even now we haven’t caught on yet. If you look at the one who will produce for you, the director, the artists—they all have one problem. Sometimes the artists will come and wait for two or three hours but the director doesn’t come, and if the director doesn’t come, you can’t do anything. Or if the cameraman doesn’t come, there’s nothing useful you can do. Every woman who produces, this is the sort of problem she comes across. Or, for example, a film that one would normally do in two or three weeks, they’ll take a month, even more than a month. Or if the schedule is to start at 8am, at 8am you will start having problems. This one hasn’t come. That one hasn’t come. They’ll all go out and only shoot one or two scenes and come back. All women who produce have this kind of problem.” When I asked her if men also faced problems like this, she admitted, “I can’t say no men have this problem, since I’ve never gone to a location to see. I’m talking specifically about the problems women face.”  But despite these problems, “We want to go back and keep making films. Since we were the first ones who experienced kantawaye, we now know what goes on. If they try to trick us now, it won’t be like at the beginning when we didn’t know anything.”
When I asked her how she responds to accusations that Hausa films are spoiling the upbringing of youth, she responded forcefully, “Wallahi, they do say this a lot–that the film industry is spoiling youth. But from my perspective, if you see someone going to ruin, that is the character of the person. [You could say that about school too.] We have finished our schooling, some people who finish their Masters, you’ll hear people say that education spoiled them. That’s not true. I will never agree that films spoil people. It’s people’s character that spoils them, not film. There are a lot of people back before [Hausa] film whose children spoiled and it wasn’t film that did it.”
As for censorship, she said she thought it helped make the films acceptable to society: “I think it is good to keep censoring films. It helps fix the films. Back then, I would sit and watch a lot of Indian films but not so much Hausa films. But now I am really watching a lot of Hausa films, because they are correcting them. With an Indian film, we don’t speak their language, we only get what they subtitle. You can sit with your children and watch, but if we sit with our children and watch Hausa films, you may hear something that isn’t appropriate.  They are saying these things in the film and you see your son there hearing it.”
But for the most part, she feels that “We are teaching people how to live in the world.  If you are doing something you don’t know is bad, and you see a film that will correct you, you will say ah, ashe, this isn’t good. So, it has added value to our lives.”In the end, her message to her fellow filmmakers was: “I want our artists to think carefully and correct themselves and also to respect themselves. If they respect themselves, other people will respect them.” And to her fellow women in film, she said, “If we meet, we should become as one, and we will progress in the same way the men are. May God give us luck.”