Just tidying up my email inbox a bit and I found an email from Chris Reid from 10 days ago which I had meant to act on. Chris shared a link to the website of the
Fowler Museum at UCLA where they have a page of
Weavers’ Stories from Island Southeast Asia. These are a series of videos. Chris particularly recommended the second interview, from Timor Leste. (I have just watched it - he's right! Very moving, great filming, English sub-titles and gives a real connection to the meaning of a textile.)
The film on Ndona, Flores is also excellent. Shows the tying of ikat, the dyeing and weaving....and so much more! The films are quite compulsive! Three down...five to go!
the link is:
http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/weaversstories The
press release on the exhibition (curated by Roy Hamilton, the Fowler Museum's curator of Asian and Pacific collections) to which the videos relate says:
Quote:
In "Weavers' Stories From Island Southeast Asia," weavers and batik artists speak for themselves in videos produced at eight sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and East Timor. What motivates women to create new patterns? How do they adjust to changing social and economic situations?
A panoply of human emotions and experiences — determination, longing, dream inspiration, theft, war and more — emerge from the stories of these remarkable women. In one video[the one Chris recommends], for example, a weaver in Tutuala, at the far eastern tip of Timor, describes how she designed a cloth pattern by copying the skin of a snake. She recounts that this "snake cloth," now served by the snake spirit, became an object of such power that when one was stolen during a militia rampage in 1999, the snake destroyed all the coconut trees in Baucau in revenge. Another weaver tells of learning weaving patterns from her deceased mother, an expert weaver, when her mother visits her in dreams.
These seven- to 10-minute oral histories include interesting footage of daily life with extended families and the interplay of generations, detailed looks at weaving and dyeing techniques, and unique celebrations, such as a wedding in a sultan's palace. Textiles created by the featured weavers and batik makers accompany each video.
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Pamela
http://www.tribaltextiles.infoon-line tribal textiles resource