In Mali, as in other West African countries, cloth has served as articles of beauty for hundreds of years. It is also widely used as a form of social-capital, equity, wealth, and inheritance. Bamako Chic recounts the previously untold story of how a small group of women cloth dyers in the 1960s, through their own initiative and creativity, re-enlivened the hand-dyed cloth industry to become a thriving commodity in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world. The dyers’ wide palate of vibrant colors and innovative designs captured the imagination of West Africans. The resultant industry has provided a source of asset building for many women, as well as created jobs, in a country where the overwhelming majority of people are unemployed.
The film represents a fresh image of African women as self-empowered agents of their own destinies. At the same time, the film offers a venue from which to explore larger questions, concerning the impact that global economic policies have on real peoples’ lives. The film strives to provide a much-needed alternative vision of Africa, a continent more commonly portrayed in the U.S. in terms of its tragedies. The film also brings attention to Mali, a West African Islamic country rarely talked about in U.S. media. At a time when Muslim people have been portrayed as religious fundamentalists and terrorists, the film implicitly offers a very different facet of Islam in Black Africa.
Bamako Chic celebrates the legacy of the pioneering dyers and the impact of their activities on their families, communities and the West African region. It is mostly a positive story, but it is not without contradictions and complexities. By following the daily lives of five women and others who have continued and expanded the tradition, the film allows us to interface with a variety of issues: economic, cultural and environmental. The characters include: Kadiatou, a poor woman who is just discovering micro-credit to start up her cloth-dyeing business; Sanata, a moderately successful dyer, who works with two co-wives and has just hired twenty disabled people; Tantou, an affluent, famous dyer, who has built her own home, her own cloth dyeing factory and is able to send her children to universities in Europe; Madame Bass, an elder pioneer whose creativity was inspired in the 1960s by the bright, durable colorfast dyes; and Aminata, a community activist who is troubled by the toxicity of the dyes and the threat to the water supply.
