Dokwaza

#76880 Dokwaza last of the African Iron Masters

VHS, 50 min., 1988, © University of Calgary $99.00 + $12.50 shipping in North America Includes public performance rights Canadian residents add GST see how to purchase  for further details

This video provides a rare record of a technology whose time has passed, and the reenactment of a smelt by iron workers of the Mafa ethnic group shows a furnace type and a process that are unique to a part of the northern Cameroon and Nigerian border area. Presented in three sequences, Dokwaza is first introduced as we follow the building of the furnace and bellows. Then charcoal and bellows skins are prepared. and the iron master demonstrates how ore is gathered and cleaned. The second sequence follows the long day of the smelt, as the furnace is charged with ore and charcoal, sacrifice made, and, after frenzied working of the bellows accompanied by music and song, a bloom mass is removed from the shaft. The third sequence takes place in the forge and shows the fining of the metal produced and its forging into a traditional hoe. Iron metallurgy began to transform the societies of sub-Saharan Africa some 2,500 years ago, but now locally smelted bloomery iron has been everywhere replaced by industrially produced stock. Traditional smelting is a complex process combining science and ritual that was disappearing just as it became feasible to capture it on visual media.