Originally produced by Documentary Educational Resources in 2018.
Surprised to learn from her Nigerian grandmother that ‘traditional’ African wax printed fabrics were a colonial invention made in the UK and Holland, British-born filmmaker and fashion designer, Aiwan Obinyan, sets out on a journey across the globe to trace the two-hundred year history of this iconic textile. From the intricate hand-crafted batiks of Indonesia to the cotton fields of North America and from European industrial mills to the bustling markets of West Africa, the story of how one fabric came to symbolise a continent, its people and their struggle for freedom.