Shehu umar by tafawa balewa biography
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Shaihu Umar
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji S. Balewa. M. Wiener Pub., $9.95 (80pp) ISBN 978-1-55876-006-6
Balewa (1912-1966) was elected Federal Prime Minister of Nigeria in 1960 and later killed in a military coup. This novella (the author's only major literary work and a bestseller in his native country) was first published in 1955. Hiskett ( The Development of Islam in West Africa ) warns that it ``is more than a story. It is a statement of the values and philosophy of orthodox Islam.'' The tale within a tale about the Hausa, black Africans who observe Islamic law, relates the plights of slaves bought and sold at the turn of the century. The mother of the eponymous young narrator must leave her son and entrusts him to the care of a friend, but he is kidnapped. When a hyena attacks and devours the kidnapper, Umar is adopted by a series of childless women. These foster mothers are enslaved, while the child (later a wise man and teacher) is concerned solely with his own comfort.
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SHAIHU UMAR
Didi Cheeka works as a director and film critic and has been working for years to reappraise the Nigerian film heritage. He initiated the archive project “Reclaiming History, Unveiling Memory” with the aim of restoring, digitizing and curating rediscovered Nigerian films.
SHAIHU UMAR is one of the most important works in Nigerian film history, but was long considered lost. Located in northern Nigeria at the end of the 19th century, the film is based on a novel by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who later became Nigeria’s first prime minister. Only the rediscovery of the camera negative in 2016 made the reconstruction of the film possible. The digitally restored version had its premiere at the Berlinale in February 2018.
Set in northern Nigeria towards the end of the 19th century,Shaihu Umarstarts with a discussion between Islamic students and their renowned teacher, the wise man Shaihu Umar. Asked about his origins, Umar begins to tell his story: he comes from a modes
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Shaihu Umar
What has happened to Nigeria’s post-war cinema?
Imagine if the entire collection of Italian Neo-realist or German Expressionist cinema were destroyed and the memory of them erased as if they were never there – not through war, but as an act of more-or-less conscious politically-sponsored forgetting. This is what has happened to Nigeria’s Post-War Cinema [the war referred to is the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War, or Biafran War –Ed.].
Until the war, Nigeria’s audio-visual archive, which it inherited from the Colonial Film enhet [which existed from 1939 to 1955 –Ed.], was a fine example of how to keep a film archive. The need to erase the memory of war and subsequent military dictatorships led to the gradual abandonment of the country’s house of history.
Imagine you are a rulle scholar studying Nigerian cinema. You want to do research on the classics – the pre-Nollywood, post-war cinema – and you have made a list of films you want to see: KONGI’S HARVEST (1970, directed