Cinema Theatres and Moral Space in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

The Plaza cinema squats on the edge of the Old City of Kano, Nigeria. Outside women sell bean cakes, men hawk cassettes, cigarettes, and oranges. Buses stop and taxis unload, disgorging passengers who hurry on to catch other buses, different taxis. 'Drop me at the Plaza.' 'Meet me at the El Dorado.' These quotidian directions are uttered by urbanites who have little interest in going to the cinema but who have internalized the fact that cinema theatres, along with mosques, the post office, banks, and other institutions of the post-colony, architecturally punctuate the city. Their built forms create an abstract skeletal structure around which the city's nervous system circulates.