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Welcome to HausaFilms.tv!

HausaFilms.tv is a collaborative wiki-based website and directory set out to disseminate organized and accurate information about Hausa films. Hausa films is a major part of Nollywood1), Nigeria's growing movie industry. Watching Hausa films is a good and entertaining way to learn the Hausa language and also get insights into the Hausa culture. Here you'll find a sortable/filterable list of Hausa films, list of Hausa actors and actresses, directors, producers, musicians, etc., and also news and links relating to the industry. This is a companion website to the youtube channel hausafilmstv that's showcasing a growing number of quality Hausa films to a global audience so feel free to watch, share, and subscribe. Stay tuned!!!

Background

The Hausa film industry can be traced back to the early 1990s2). Turmin Danya (The Draw) is said to be the first Hausa film which came out in 1990 by the Tumbin Giwa Drama Group3). Since then, hundreds if not thousands more Hausa films have been produced but have been mostly limited to West Africa. We are now in a wonderful global and digital information age with the advent of great technologies like the Internet, digital cameras, streaming video, and mobile devices and computers… and so our goal is to use these technologies to further promote and spread the Hausa film industry and Hausa culture globally. To learn more about the history of Hausa films, you're encouraged to read and listen (in Hausa) to these and other available resources.

The Website

The hausafilms.tv website and project was initiated in September 2011 with aims to fill the void of Hausa content on the Internet. We're hoping it will be a great resource for Hausa film fans, enthusiasts, and those curious and want to learn about Hausa culture, Hausa language, and Hausa films. It was greatly inspired by the crowdsourced IMDb and Wikipedia websites which allows other users to contribute and thus serves as a great hub of information for all to consume, but we are focusing in a specific niche field that is Hausa films.

The site is powered by a heavily configured DokuWiki engine with the vector template.

Helping the Wiki

Right now this wiki is maintained by a very small group of people, one person actually. At times, you might find it slow with updates and a lot of incomplete pages. We'd love to have ardent and knowledgeable people who will help:

Learn the dokuwiki syntax and give it a go or use the contact form with your correction, additions, or for more help.

Watching Hausa Films Online

While collecting, curating, and organizing Hausa film information is one of our main goals and purpose, it would also be nice to be able to provide a way to actually watch these films online in full and so that's our other goal. It's not going to be easy to accomplish this legally but we're slowly planning and working on this so that in the long run we'll even be able to grow and reinvest in the industry this way. As we speak, there are actually about 200+ Hausa films uploaded on the behemoth video platform that is YouTube4). That trend is only looking to be growing as the technologies becomes more available in Nigeria and as more Hausawa travel abroad where there's most likely much better technological infrastructures to upload these films. Most if not all of these full-length movies were probably uploaded in good faith and currently serves as the only way for those outside of West Africa to consume Hausa films. But still, most were likely uploaded without the consent of the film owners. Perhaps these YouTube users are just starting to fill the empty void left by the Hausa film industry itself. HausaFilms.tv has a channel there that's mainly being used to promote Hausa films with trailers/previews.

Possible Pay-per-view solutionWhat we propose is for content owners to really start being proactive and work towards providing high quality content to more viewers all over the world through proper means like getting their movies online where they can potentially make more money either through advertising or charging. At this point, HausaFilms.tv can implement a possible solution that will allow folks with a credit card or PayPal to pay to stream/download Hausa films online. All we need is the content and opportunity to test it out. So if you are a Hausa film content producer, owner, or stakeholder and would like to participate in marketing and distributing your content online, please don't hesitate to contact us at hausafilmstv@gmail.com to discuss further. The possibilities and upsides are there and can be greatly beneficial to all!

HausaFilms.tv in the Press

We're very proud and appreciative of all the mentions and coverage we receive. Thank you!

1) Although there are arguments and distinguishable differences to be made here… see this forum thread for more context/info.
4) Rough estimate of complete films to which some are in multiple parts, some may be duplicated, etc…