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· August, 2005

Stories about Ghana from August, 2005

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The BBC has a long tradition of encouraging readers and listeners of their Africa service to talk about their views of the continent, running features like “Why I Love Africa”,...

Written by Ethan Zuckerman
8 August 2005

Ghana: Kente Weavers of Ashanti

Last night, I put together a short video about traditional kente weaving in Ghana's Ashanti region. Kente, perhaps the most famous West African textile, is brightly colored, coming in a variety of patterns, some reserved for use by Ashanti royalty. The video was shot in the historic kente weaving village of Bonwire, about an hour south of Kumasi. Three weavers are featured, each using a traditional loom to make the cloth. The video also contains music performed by Ghanaian drummer Obo Addy, used with permission from Alula Records. There are two versions of the video: high resolution (13 megs) and low resolution (two megs).

kente weavers

Kente Weavers of Ashanti:
High res video
Low res video

Production notes: The video was shot on July 23, 2005 in Bonwire village, Ashanti Region, Ghana, using a Konica-Minolta dImage A-200 digital camera. The Quicktime files shot on the camera were uploaded to a Macintosh G4 laptop and edited with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. Both versions of the video were compressed using the 3ivx compression codec. Total editing time was about 90 minutes, including compression.

Written by Andy Carvin
5 August 2005

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