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Wax Print
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Filmmaker Name:
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Aiwan Obinyan
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Film Length:
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97 min
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Film Year:
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2018
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Decade:
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2010s
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Language:
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in English
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Subtitle Language:
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English, French, Portuguese, Japanese subtitles
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Color:
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color
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Region:
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Africa
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Subject:
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Popular Culture and Consumption
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Wax Print traces the vast and multi-stranded global history of a fabric that has become an iconic symbol of Africa and her children worldwide. This beautiful, transnational two-year journey has taken director Aiwan Obinyan around the world, in search of African wax prints and the untold story of how wax print fabric came to symbolize a continent, its people, and their struggle for freedom.
The film brings forth issues of fast fashion and mass-produced wax print copies, while detailing an Indonesian, English, and Dutch history of the fabric itself and its significance for pan-African identities. As seen in Batik and Kente techniques, bright bold patterns and colors become a significant part of the culture, as well as the identities of the African diaspora that have kept the heritage alive. With names like “The Ungrateful Husband,” which is worn by women to shame their disloyal husbands, each wax print has a pattern and identity embodied in the cloth, and an origin story that is then accepted and integrated into the culture by consumers.
“Obinyan’s enthusiasm for wax print and her excitement at being witness to the process of its making are infectious. [The film] makes poignant observations about counterfeiting and cultural identity… [and] ultimately ties the fabric’s identity to the black experience itself.”
– Debbie Onuoha, Humboldt University, Berlin
Selected Screenings & Awards
Bradford Literature Festival, UK, 2018
Pan African Film Festival, USA, 2019
Africa in Motion, UK, 2019
12°N 61°W Grenadian Film Festival, 2019
Women of the Lens, UK, 2019
African Film Festival New Zealand, 2019
AFRIFF, Nigeria, 2019
Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Nigeria, 2019
San Francisco Black Film Festival, 2019
Wax Print Festival, Ghana, 2019
Berkshire Museum, USA, 2019
Tubman African American Film Festival, USA, 2019
BlackStar Film Festival, USA, 2019
Black History Studies Film Festival, UK, 2019
CinemAfrica Film Festival, Sweden, 2020
Utrecht Centraal Museum: Voices of Fashion Exhibition, Netherlands, 2021
Wax Print
Director
Aiwan Obinyan Executive Producer
Dr. Evaristus Obinyan
Producers
Christina Fonthes
Natuley Smalle
Camera Operators
Marcos Avlonitis
Jaha Browne
Black Betty
Sound Editor/Mixer
AiAi Studios
Motion Graphics
Simon Fong Wah
Casey Tenhue
Production Assistant
Joanne Brandon
Marketing Assistant
Steve Morris
Story/Offline Editor
Bob Griffin
Online Editor
Chibuikem Akata
Music
Aiwan Obinyan
Credits
John Curran Davis
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