Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Larsen ★★★★½ 1

  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: www.larsenonfilm.com/daughters-of-the-dust

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 2

  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 that it jars you out of the film entirely. I am curious how they play without the film; would they still just be cheezy holdovers from a bad 80s prog band's worst practice session, or would they come across as some sort of deconstructive art noise? Either way, as the soundtrack to this or any film, they are agony. Had this subtitles, I might have been tempted to try it on mute, but that would have forced…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 11

  Daughters of the Dust is beautiful. It has a lyricism of its own, existing as an elliptical, poetic depiction of history. It is rooted in dialect and cultural specificity. There is no easy gateway for us to enter its world, we must only observe. It is a story that always repeats, about the tensions between old and new. Yet what Daughters of the Dust presents is a calm harmony. The conflict isn't loud or harsh, it is executed through silences and words. Peace is found through acceptance. By living, we keep the memories of our parents alive. Similarly, this film keeps history alive. Daughters of the Dust exists outside time, even in its use of a voiceover from the future…

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  Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★★½

  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 transporting them and committed mass suicide rather than live as slaves.

  Now, nearly 100 years later, the islanders are in transition. Entering into a new migration phase, heading to the mainland, struggling with the changing times and the fading of old faiths.

  The generational idea that a person is larger than the self - that a person is all of their people that came before them - must be maintained, even as the family scatters, seeds to the wind.

  Told by an unborn child.

  Movie bliss.

  “We are two people in one body. The last of the old and the first of the new.” - Nana Peazant

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  Review by Carlos Valladares ★★★★★ 1

  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, Beyonce’s “Lemonade”, Kendrick and the return of D’Angelo, the re-release of Dash’s film deserves to be greeted with cheers and trumpet blasts. “Daughters” is a seminal, visionary, challenging work of art — a masterpiece that every American should see.

  The film traces the intergenerational trials and tribulations of the Peazants, a Gullah family who are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans. The Gullahs live along the coast of South Carolina in 1902, at the dawn…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  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 key component of Straub/Huillet historical films that places carry a lot of lived experience in them, but also promises another stories to come. A way to cinematic express how history is never isolated, but a constant struggle.

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  Review by claira curtis ★★★★

  “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 in my write up for Dash’s film but I’d rather instead highlight the poetic flow of her work over showcasing my own. Daughters of the Dust has a tranquil lull to it that feels so peaceful. A complete abandonment of Westernized narrative structure means that in some ways the film is more challenging than most.

  The joy of a watch like Daughters of the Dust is rooted in its full embodiment…

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½

  "Lyrical" these days tends to be short for Malickian, which itself has become a style so overused that it's employed to sell you jeans as much as to feel a character's inner life. But DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is lyrical on its own terms, illuminating not only the emotional states of its characters but the social order that binds them, a unique cocktail of tribal customs preserved through the forced cultural deprogramming and homogenization of slavery. Kino's old DVD is a travesty for so gorgeous a film; it deserves a restoration, or at least a remaster to do justice to Dash's images.

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★★

  "I am the silence that you cannot understand."

  Equal parts melancholic and hopeful, Daughters of the Dust is situated in the liminal space before one way of life begins and another ends . It's a visually gorgeous and culturally important movie that doesn't sacrifice entertainment for messaging and a rich exploration of a lesser known time and place. Poetry on screen.

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  Review by Carlos Valladares 1

  Visionary art, pure and simple. To call it "bourgeois", "pretentious," "self-centered"—(looking at you, Armond White, who presumes Spielbergian clarity or Lee punchiness is the only valid form of art available to artists-of-color wanting to make a difference in the world)—is to assume that art should be completely accessible, linear, easily fileable and rateable and gut-punchy the first time around for it to be deemed "good". Such a narrow definition leaves no room for shimmering mystery, not of an actually self-serving PTA/Master kind, but of an artistic mystery and a lack of knowledge of self that is an organic choice for a film whose content is directly tied with its form. Daughters is one such work: splintered into little prismastic shards…

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★ 15

  Lyrically transportive, Daughters of the Dust is important for a few reasons: it was the first film written and directed by a Black woman given a wide theatrical release in the US (a shame that it took until 1991 for this to happen, but better late than never, I guess) and it is an engrossing look into the lives three generations of Gullah women who return to their ancestral home on an island in South Carolina. Culturally impactful as well as immaculately composed in terms of its visuals, Dash gives us an intimate look into the practices, history and struggles—the main struggle being that of values of traditionalism versus those of modernity—faced by a group of people that have never…

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  Review by Matthew LeCHARLTON ★★★★ 8

  A Beautiful Mess

  A fictionalised history of the decision a family of former slaves take to leave the simplicity and traditions of island life to embark on a journey to America.

  It’s a transient cultural tone poem that sometimes falters due to amateurish production. It’s ambitious and great to look at contrasting African Americans on fashionable Edwardian attire living on sparse island. 

  Underneath its mysterious nature and mood the film doesn’t say enough. 

  I watched this in an attempt to keep up-to-date with the new site and sound critics list. I was surprised critics had selected this and hope for more from Meshes In The Afternoon, Black Girl and Daisies