Daughters of the Dust (1991)

Directed by: Julie Dash | 112 minutes | drama, history, romance | Actors: Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbarao, Trula Hoosier, Umar Abdurrahamn, Adisa Anderson, Kaycee Moore, Bahni Turpin, Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Tommy Redmond Hicks, Cornell Royal, Tony King, M. Cochise Anderson

You would be in the spotlight again with a film that you put your heart and soul into more than 25 years ago. It happened to Julie Dash with ‘Daughters of the Dust’. In 1991, the film made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, resulting in a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize and a winning award for cinematography, thanks to Arthur Jaffa’s camera work. As the first African-American woman, this earned the director a major nationwide theatrical release in the US, and since 2004 “Daughters of the Dust” has been part of the National Film Registry because of its cultural, historical and aesthetic importance. Now, a quarter of a century later, the film has been digitally restored and provided with color corrections, exactly as Dash envisioned but was never able to realize this at the time due to insufficient money.

‘Daughters of the Dust’ is set in 1902 and focuses on the Peazant family, residents of the Sea Islands and part of the Gullah community. Isolated from the outside world and unlike other African Americans, they have their own language, culture and rituals. The adults in the Peazant family are the first generation not born into slavery – the freeborn – and are faced with the choice to make the crossing to the mainland with their children.

The freeborn have the feeling that ‘old wounds’ (the slavery past) hold them in their grip while they are ready for development and adventure. A certain generation gap seems to arise in which contradictions such as old versus young, past versus future and traditions versus modernity lead to the necessary discussions within the Peazant family.

Nana Peazant (Cora Lee Day), founding mother of the family, former slave and convinced islander, fears that respect for the past will be lost. “Never forget who we are and how far we’ve come,” says Nana. She emphasizes the importance of taking and embracing their roots, i.e. the history of ancestors, the age-old traditions and their faith.. regardless of location or time. An important and valuable message that ‘Daughters of the Dust’ mainly revolves around: preservation of culture.

The fact that Julie Dash has thought particularly well and visibly about the representation of the whole is clearly apparent in the female costumes, which also fit in beautifully with the era in which the story takes place. The adult women and children of the Peazant family are all dressed in white and thus represent the future, the generation that chooses a new start on the mainland. Except for Nana, she is dressed in an indigo-colored dress that subtly refers to the past, the slavery times (indigo plantations). By using voice-overs of an unborn child and an ancestor (the links between) the past, present and future come together metaphorically.

Feminist or not, as the meaningful title suggests, the Gullah women play the leading role and the male characters only play a supporting role. ‘Daughters of the Dust’ refers to the island itself and the women who grew up there, as well as to the women (daughters) who are, as it were, the bearers of a culture or tradition.

The music, composed by John Barnes who has tried to achieve a certain magic and mystery through various musicians and music styles, is synthesizer music with an African touch. While the African instrumental music perfectly matches the content and atmosphere, the synthesizer is more reminiscent of the nineties, the time in which the film was made.

Still, ‘Daughters of the Dust’ is not for everyone. Some prior knowledge about the history and the, for many, unknown culture makes it more attractive to better understand the content and the (underlying) meanings of the film. In addition, the story structure deviates enormously from what people are generally used to. Images and events alternate in a separate, experimental way. It sometimes tends towards an incoherent whole in which fairly short scenes present themselves to the viewer from scratch. This sometimes makes it difficult to fully follow the story and to clarify the precise relationships within the Peazant family.

The film also largely consists of poetic and theatrical acting, which makes the film almost more like a grand play with the Sea Islands as the setting. And of course you just have to love that. When ‘Daughters of the Dust’ is viewed from the right perspective, Dash did a lot of spiritual and artistic work at the time. A valuable history lesson for many, a classic for some.