Daughters of the Dust

If Daughters of the Dust seems otherworldly, that's only because American cinema, independent and otherwise, has paid too little attention to others' worlds. // Bumped this up half a star after sitting with it longer and then writing about it:…

Josh Larsen

“I am the silence you can’t understand. I am the utterance of my name.”  Hey did y’all know no films directed by Black women were theatrically released within the US until Julie Dash’s 1991 Daughters of the Dust? Because I sure as hell didn’t. I wanted to be more poetic…

claira curtis

This film might have one of the worst soundtracks I have ever heard. It not only features bad, cheezy, overloud synthesizers, it features them at moments that would otherwise be just fine moments of quiet contemplation. These synths interject with such unpleasant randomness…

Sally Jane Black

A spell cast from golden light, incredible costumes, euphoric Gullah Creole, and pure dream structure storytelling. The poem of a family living on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where in 1803 a large group of captive Igbo people took control of the ship that was…

Joshua Dysart

A história, passada em 1902, se concentra na autoridade de mulheres negras e na oposição entre tradição e modernidade, ou ainda entre o paganismo africano e o monoteísmo cristão das Américas. Na pequena região de Ibo Landing, historicamente marcada por um suicídio em massa…

Barmilliv

Daughters of the Dust's place in the canon shoul've been safe on the basis of how Dash uses space alone, particularly that beach. The islands become this symbolic place for shared experience that never lack in a concrete existence. One of the few movies that understand a…

Filipe Furtado

B. N. C. (BLACK NEVER CRACKS) - A BLACK CINEMA MARATHON Not so much a film in the conventional sense and more like poetry in motion, visual narrative at its finest. Profound words of the self in the world told in spoken words, which all fit the very idyllic nature of the…

Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine

What's past is prologue.Visually stunning and culturally significant, but severely lacking everywhere else. The narrative has no cohesion, instead feeling bloated and random to the point of tedium. The acting ranges from decent to laughably ridiculous, taking me out of the…

J. K.

This December, a pillar of American cinema is being re-released. “Daughters of the Dust,” the 1991 debut of independent director Julie Dash, has been restored and will be distributed by the Cohen Film Collection in theaters across America. In this era of Black Lives Matter,…

Carlos Valladares