Daughters of the Dust

Julie Dash took the culture of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands as the subject for her first feature film, and crafted it into a lyrical portrayal of the Gullah culture and a unique dramatization of the sensibilities of African-American women.

Noted by critics for its exquisite cinematography, the film records the departure of one Sea Island family for a new life on the mainland. Told with graceful and leisurely visual lyricism, with attention to the details of the family’s emotional drama, the narrative owes its theme and structure, according to Dash, to “the fact that African Americans don’t have solid lineage they can trace. All they have are scraps of memories.The whole film is about the scraps of memories that these women, these ancestral heiresses, carry around in tin cans and little private boxes.”

Daughters of the Dust was a major inspiration for Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade.

"A modern classic and one of the greatest American independent films ever made." (Miami Herald)

In English & French.

Cosponsored with ASRC.

website: www.cohenmedia.net/films/daughters-of-the-dust

Subtitled