Private Project

Cai Lun's Key: How the Kam People Preserved the Earliest Papermaking

An art professor and her students apprentice with Kam minority artisans deep in the mountains of southwest China to learn early papermaking technology. The Kam have lived secluded from the rest of the world for centuries. Their papermaking tradition can be traced directly to the Chinese official Cai Lun, who is credited with inventing paper over 2000 years ago. Kam artisans adopted his technique after the addition of mulberry bark to the pulp mixture but before he invented the dipping method of forming paper. Their current practice takes us back two millennia the way no archaeological discovery can.

  • Marie Anna Lee
    Director
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Writer
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Producer
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Key Cast
  • Lisa Cooperman
    Key Cast
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Editors
  • William Lowe
    Editors
  • Karen Su
    Animators
  • Thomas Wight
    Animators
  • Gabriel Teo
    Animation supervisor
  • Edmund Jakober
    Sound Design
    The Yellow Wallpaper, Vanità
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Camera
  • Ran Dong
    Camera
  • Tereza Kackosova
    Camera
  • Anastasya Uskov
    Camera
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 15, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    15,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    China
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Marie Anna Lee

Marie Anna Lee is a Czech designer and artist who has worked on preserving the Chinese Kam minority heritage since 2007. She has documented the Kam arts, crafts and culture in general though photographs, videos and writing. In 2008, she wrote the “Kam Women Artisans of China: Dawn of the Butterflies” published by Cambridge Scholars. Lee is now producing several short documentary films on the Kam crafts and completing an online archive of her documentary work. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of the Pacific in California, USA.

She received the 2013 and 2014 SEED (Social Environmental Economic Design) Award honorable mention for excellence in public interest design for her work. Lee exhibited her documentary photographs of Naprstek Museum, part of the Czech National Museum system in 2019/20. As part of the Kam/Dong delegation from Dimen, she presented at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, in 2014. She taught at the Public Interest Design Institute in Denver in 2013 and presented her research at numerous national and international conferences.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

In 2007 I visited the village of Dimen on a short documentary trip and felt transported back hundreds of years to a pre-industrial society. The Kam living there do not have a written form of their language and the younger generation has not learned the traditional skills of their elders, as these practices have become irrelevant to modern life. I’ve made several tips to document the culture and crafts before they disappear as globalization encroaches on the village. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the way paper is made in the village is linked directly to the earliest papermaking methods and specifically to Cai Lun who is credited with inventing paper. This humble village holds a key to Cai Lun’s invention, preserving it to this day.

WHY IT IS UNIQUE: Kam papermaking heritage originated in a very narrow window of approximately 40 years in 2nd century CE. The Kam began to make paper after Cai Lun introduced mulberry bark but before he changed the method of forming paper by dipping a mold into a vat with pulp.

WHY IT MATTERS: The women have kept passing this sacred knowledge from generation to generation for thousands of years preserving evidence of the earliest papermaking processes that cannot be learned from archaeological evidence or written documents. Yet, the young generation has not learned the process and the knowledge will be lost once the elderly artisans pass away.

WHY IT WILL SUCCEED: The film takes the audience into a secluded pre-industrial community and shows them a lifestyle and artisanal practices that have been lost elsewhere. The researchers bridge cultural differences persuading the artisans to share their millennia-old heritage with the outside world. At the end, the audience becomes part of the solution as they are entrusted with the knowledge to continue the tradition.