Unity: Dress-scapes of Accra
Dress-scapes of Accra
Unity: Dress-scapes of Accra is an ethnographic film about African fashion in the capital of Ghana. The comeback of African print seems to be emerging in the fashion world of Accra. While following Allan, a fashion designer, and his wife Cynthia, this mosaic film shows the great diversity of tailor-made fashion and hybrid styles, the ways that African wear is used, and the expression of culture by wearing African prints. The process of sewing a dress shows the marriage of both fabric and design, tradition and creativity, and husband and wife.
Directors
Mara Lin Visser
Mara Lin Vissar graduated as a visual anthropologist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Throughout her study period, she was interested in film and how media can affect people. She discovered that she loved filmmaking while shooting a film on material culture in a Dutch town. The medium of film gives her the freedom to express herself, her thoughts, and her academic observations in a way that feels natural to her. She thinks film is the perfect way to explore the broad subject of material culture, and decided to continue in this field in Ghana, resulting in this film. She finds the most interesting part of filmmaking the process of approaching people, making them feel comfortable so they can tell their (own) story. She is currently working on different academic and cultural projects with audiovisual means and methods.