Daugh­ters of the Dust (1991)

It seems a small but unsur­pris­ing tragedy that Amer­i­can direc­tor, author and aca­d­e­m­ic, Julie Dash, has not been able to make films at a fre­quen­cy more in line with her white, male com­pa­tri­ots. Daugh­ters of the Dust is her rhap­sod­ic 1991 debut fea­ture, and it exhibits a unique cin­e­mat­ic voice from the get go. It also hints at the future trea­sures she will forge, while being a mel­liflu­ous, mean­der­ing and heart­felt screen chimera in its own right.

It’s the sto­ry of a small enclave of souls (the sprawl­ing Peazant clan) wait­ing anx­ious­ly at a cross­roads in their cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Off the South Car­oli­na-Geor­gia coast­line is a small island par­adise on which African slaves have set­tled. It stands as a sym­bol­ic annex from Amer­i­can oppres­sion and seg­re­ga­tion, but it’s also geo­graph­i­cal­ly lim­it­ing, not yet the cru­cible for a new and enlight­ened form of civil­i­sa­tion. The film offers a poet­ic polit­i­cal vision of a soci­ety falling between the stools of pro­gres­sion and regres­sion, ask­ing whether stand­ing off against the trav­es­ties of the ante­bel­lum Amer­i­can South is the only way to attain true freedom.

Instead of attempt­ing to ratio­nalise the char­ac­ters and their per­son­al­i­ties for a mass audi­ence, Dash cel­e­brates and ampli­fies their cul­tur­al idio­syn­crasies. The actors speak as if they’re deliv­er­ing lines on a stage, but this the­atri­cal veneer taps into a tra­di­tion of sto­ry­telling and myth-mak­ing. As men saunter around, play fight and argue, the women cook up corn and yams and shell fish. But far from keep­ing their con­ver­sa­tion on the sub­ject of banal domes­tic chores, they too wax exis­ten­tial about the cus­toms they import­ed from West Africa.

That dimin­ish­ing link to a more spir­i­tu­al­ly inclined way of life emanates through Arthur Jafa’s dream­like cin­e­matog­ra­phy which makes use of breath­tak­ing in-cam­era effects. A vis­it­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er offers the islanders a taste of the new world, and it’s invig­o­rat­ing to think that his images are cap­tur­ing a moment of col­lec­tive transcendence.