ollowing a visit to Mali in 1994, where it was our objective to collect accounts on the smelting of iron ore - which we believed to have totally disappeared - our local informants told us of one of the elder blacksmiths who lived in the Séno plains in the village of Garou-Lé. He was 97 years old and answered all of our questions. Of extreme interest was the fact that some of his Ç younger brothers È, who lived in the village of Doundé, had practised the art of smelting until the 1970âs.
This is how we met the last Dogon blacksmiths - eleven in number - who still know the secrets of this age-old activity because the import of iron was banned until very recently in these regions. Aware of the fact that their knowledge would be lost to their descendants, they offered to gather spontaneously to invoke the spirits, sink a mine shaft, make charcoal, reconstruct a furnace and Ç give birth È to metal, for the last time.
The process lasted two months, in January and February 1995. Eric Huysecom, of the Department of anthropology and ecology of the University of Geneva was in charge of the ethnographic and scientific observations while Bernard Agustoni, the cameraman, shot the film.
