US, GB 1991, D, SC Julie Dash, C Arthur Jafa, E Joseph Burton, Amy Carey, M John Barnes, S Jeremy Hoenack, P Julie Dash, Arthur Jafa, Steven Jones, American Playhouse, Geechee Girls, WMG Film, Cast Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbara O, Trula Hoosier, Umar Abdurrahman, Adisa Anderson, Kaycee Moore, Print colour, DCP from 35mm, 112 min, engl./Gullah OV, Park Circus

Daughters of the Dust is set in the islands off the South Carolina coast at the turn of the century, where a Gullah family [descendants of former slaves of west-african descent that lived in colonies along the lower Atlantic, editor's note] meets for a ‘last supper’ before most of its members leave for a new life on the mainland. The film is a tale of rootedness and migration, of a family’s coming together and its dissolution – and women, as bearers of their culture’s African heritage, are the focus of the dramas that unfold. [...] The non-linear narrative evokes storytelling in the Griot manner of West African oral cultures, in which memories and objects are invested with meanings from which the story is woven: “The Griot will come to a birth, a wedding or funeral and, over a period of days, will recount the family’s history, with the stories going off at a tangent, weaving in and out and in and out,” explains Dash. “I decided that Daughters of the Dust should be told that way.” (Karen Alexander, Sight and Sound, No. 3/1993)