Private Project

Denim Gold: How the Kam People Preserved Indigo Dyeing

An art professor and her students apprentice with Chinese Kam minority artisans to learn early indigo dyeing technology. The Kam who have lived in seclusion deep in the mountains of southwest China have valued the black-glue iridescent cloth as much as gold and have carefully guarded the secret of making the cloth. When the young generation lost interested in their traditions, the elderly artisans decided to reveal their knowledge. The technique is lengthy but the vat has does not use the harsh chemicals many other indigo-dyeing vats use and it is long-lasting.

The trick is that the artisans reuse liquid from a spent dye vat to start a new one. As the team learns the hard way when replicating the process at home, the technique does not work without it and so the mystery of the Kam vat persists.

  • Marie Anna Lee
    Director
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Writer
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Producer
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Key Cast
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Lisa Cooperman
    Key Cast
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Editors
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Animators
  • Edmund Jakober
    Sound Design
    Cai Lun's Key, The Yellow Wallpaper, Vanità
  • Marie Anna Lee
    Camera
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Ran Dong
    Camera
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Tereza Kackosova
    Camera
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Anastasya Uskov
    Camera
    Cai Lun's Key
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    29 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 31, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    China, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
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.

The Kam value indigo as much as gold and have passed the knowledge of its use in dyeing cloth down from mother to daughter. Initially, they were happy to show us how to dip the cloth in the vat and when asked, let us dye the cloth. We however wanted to know the entire process from finding the ingredients to finishing off the cloth, something the artisans were not prepared to divulge.

After we spent time working with the artisans on other projects and cooking a meal for them, the artisans decided to entrust us with their heritage and preserve it for the future generations. This film is the result of our journey with the artisans.

WHY IT IS UNIQUE: Kam artisans have preserved the process for centuries but finally decided to share the technique. Their indigo vat does not use many of the harsh chemical used in other indigo vats and is long lasting.

WHY IT MATTERS: The women have kept passing this sacred knowledge from generation to generation for thousands of years preserving evidence of the earliest indigo-dyeing 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.