Daughters of the Dust (1991)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Julie Dash

Writer:

Julie Dash (writer)

Release Date:

27 December 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where...

Plot Keywords:

Gullah Culture | Island | Sea Islands | Lyrical | Poignant

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Cora Lee Day	...	Nana Peazant
Alva Rogers	...	Eula Peazant
Barbarao	...	Yellow Mary
Trula Hoosier	...	Trula
Umar Abdurrahamn	...	Bilal Muhammad
Adisa Anderson	...	Eli Peazant
Kaycee Moore	...	Haagar Peazant
Bahni Turpin	...	Iona Peazant
Cheryl Lynn Bruce	...	Viola Peazant
Tommy Redmond Hicks	...	Mr. Snead
Malik Farrakhan	...	Newlywed Man
Cornell Royal	...	Daddy Mack Peazant
Vertamae Grosvenor	...	Hair Braider
Sherry Jackson	...	Older Cousin
Reverend Ervin Green	...	Baptist Minister

Runtime:

UK:112 min

Country:

USA | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Certification:

UK:PG

Filming Locations:

St. Helena Island, South Carolina, USA

Company:

American Playhouse

Quotes:

[first lines]
Nana Peazant: I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the barren one and many are my daughters. I am the silence that you can not understand. I am the utterance of my name.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Messenger (1994)

One of the most important African American films of the last 20 years

"Daughters of the Dust" isn't an easy work, but it's a very fine accomplishment, and one of the most important African American films of the last 20 years.

Julie Dash has chosen to share with her audience a chapter of black history that is still new to most white Americans, the internal issues that came with Black Americans as they made their way North in the years between 1900 and 1920. The separation from the soil, the divorce from those remnants of West African culture that survived through the holocaust of slavery. The psychic tearing of the transition from rural to urban culture. The skin game that Yellow Mary and other "fair skinned" Black people had to play in order to survive in White America. If the film is boring to many, let it be plainly said that it is boring for many because the film maker courageously chose to examine a piece of history that most White Americans- and many Black ones- no longer care much about.

If you want to be entertained, this isn't a film you'll enjoy. "Daughters of the Dust" offers instead an opportunity to probe deep, to look close at the dreamy quality of an internal life, and a balanced relationship with the earth, that most of our peoples in the United States have chosen to leave behind them for exactly the wrong reasons. Let those who have difficulty thinking about these things stick to action films. "Daughters of the Dust" is about something more akin to the sense of wonder that's being rapidly stamped out of many of us in the name of mom, apple pie, and the gross national product. It is worth not one, but many viewings. Julie Dash has created a masterpiece of American cinema.