INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S MONTH
Daughters of the Dust + Intro
Three generations of Gullah women on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, prepare to migrate from the rural South to the North, confronting their past, present and future. Intro by Anna-Maria Nabirye.
Director: JULIE DASH
Cast includes: CORA LEE DAY, ALVA ROGERS, BARBARA O
INTRO BY ANNA-MARIA NABIRYE, AFRI-CO-LAB
112 mins / 1991 / USA, GERMANY / ENGLISH
The rise of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust to recognition as one of the greatest films of all time hardly comes as a surprise to Black women moviegoers, who championed the film from its earliest screenings and fiercely defended it against wilful misunderstandings in the decades that followed. Black women, in whose image the 1991 feature was directly created, saw then what is now widely understood: Dash’s visionary visual marriage between Afrocentric aesthetics and the rich emotional depth of Black womanhood is a cinematic triumph.
Daughters rapidly engulfs you with the lush, matriarchal world of the Peazant family, residing in South Carolina’s Sea Islands at the turn of the 20th century. The fundamental crisis takes shape as the women-centred family is split between migrating north or staying in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Dash’s multilayered narrative unfolds by allowing the youngest member of the clan, an unborn child, and the eldest members, the ancestors, to weigh in, in an energetic display of shared narrative.
Julie Dash became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film in 1991 and broke racial and gender boundaries with this Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography).
Screening as part of International Women's Day 2026 and introduced by Anna-Maria Nabirye, Afri-co-Lab https://www.afri-co-lab.org/
"The big screen is the best place to see this restored 1991 gem from African American film-maker Julie Dash", Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
This film is F-Rated. The F-Rating is applied to all films which are directed by women and/or written by women. Find out more about F-Rating.
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