Introduction:
Short Take
By Shaibu Husseini (Nigeria)

My name is Shaibu Husseini, with Shaibu as my surname. I am first a performing artist and then a journalist. (I act and dance professionally). I report on arts and movies for Nigeria's flagship newspaper "The Guardian" published daily in Lagos, Nigeria's former capital city, and I have been at it since 1998.

Although I developed, right from early school, the passion for watching movies and making notes afterwards, the birth of Nollywood as the self-styled Nigerian Movie Industry is liberally dubbed and the corresponding boom in movie production in Nigeria further boosted my interest and if you like, incursion into film criticism and general coverage of filmic events. 

Besides keeping the film culture alive and keeping the history of Nollywood alive on the pages, I delved headlong into film criticism because I believe that Nollywood has reached a stage where the growing movie crowd need to begin to desire to see and think about films beyond just glossing over them.

There is a growing appreciation of the role of film critics here. Although most practitioners are still averred to criticism and so would not invite a critic to their premieres, the response I have received to some of my published reviews, from some of those in the professional class has shown that the place of the critic in the overall value chain cannot be over emphasized. One is hoping that the vocation will be firmly rooted with the planned inauguration of the Nigerian Chapter of FIPRESCI.

Shaibu Husseini

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