Dress-scapes of Accra

Video | Fashion & Design

Dress-scapes is an ethnographic film about African fashion in the capital of Ghana.

Dress-scapes

The comeback of African print seems to be emerging in the fashion system of Accra. The film gives an interesting overview of dress-scapes in Accra by showing the great diversity of tailor-made fashion, and the creativity of the hybrid styles. But it also highlights beautiful details by focusing on a few participants who show expression of personal identity and culture by wearing the African prints. In this way the film is not only observational, it gives people space to tell their story and show they are proud of the African wear.

Mara Lin Visser

All through her BA in Media & Culture, Mara Lin was interested in different forms of media and its ability to affect people by making them think, feel, or act. Film as a medium gives her the freedom to express her thoughts about certain topics and academic observations in a natural way. The camera is a strong tool to explore and conduct research, especially in material culture. During her MA in Visual Anthropology Mara Lin went to Ghana for her fieldwork. The research resulted in the film Unity: Dress-scapes of Accra (2016). She cooperated with RCMC in a collection trip for African wear from Accra.

For Mara Lin, the most interesting part of filmmaking is connecting (with) people. Making them feel comfortable, so they can tell their (own) story in a natural way. At the moment she is doing different academic and cultural projects with audiovisual methods. She is working on projects such as; a documentary theatre-film project about the feeling of home, a visual anthropological project with collaborative research methods.

maralinvisser@gmail.com