February 7th: DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (Julie Dash, 1991)
NOTE: This film will be projected in the high-definition Blu-ray format.
At the turn of the century, an extended African-American family based on the South Carolina Sea Islands prepares to migrate to the mainland and struggles to retain aspects of their cultural identity.
New York City native Julie Dash graduated from the film school at City College of New York, attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and received her MFA from the UCLA Film School, becoming part of the generation of innovative and revolutionary black film students known as the "L.A. Rebellion". A series of short films led to her receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed her to heavily research her family's history in the Gullah culture of the southeastern U.S.
Dash wrote a screenplay inspired by this research, with an immersion into its atmosphere that included a dialogue vernacular specific to the region. With her husband, cinematographer Arthur Jafa, began raising money to shoot the script. With help from the National Endowment for the Arts, they raised $40,000 and shot on location, managing to record a sizable portion of the story. Despite their inexperience and indifference from Hollywood, a screening of the sample footage at the Sundance Film Festival attracted the interest of PBS's American Playhouse, which funded the rest of the shoot for a high six-figures.
The crew included acclaimed black visual artists Kerry James Marshall and Michael Kelly Williams as production designer and art director, respectively. A big challenge for Jafa was finding a film stock that would capture the darker complexions of his actors while avoiding overexposure due to the white dresses worn by most of the women throughout the film. Finding Kodak film optimized for a lighter skin tone, he shot tests using various brands, stocks, and setups, eventually setting on German-made Agfa film. Jafa also experimented with handcranking cameras to achieve variations in speed for certain shots.
With a cast of veterans unknown outside the black independent film scene, Dash had all her actors train with a dialect coach to learn the Gullah-influenced dialogue. The sets were built with available materials akin to what the residents of the area would have had at the time. Dash gave specific focus to the indigo-dyeing process common to settlers in the region. At one point Hurricane Hugo disrupted the production, forcing the cast and crew to evacuate the location, which upon their return had been radically altered.
Dash received a Rockefeller grant to sustain the film through the long post-production process. Her lyrical visual approach containing elements of various religious texts and rituals, combined with the story's abstract, non-linear structure gives the film a distinct aesthetic stamp, underlined further by her decision not to include subtitles for the Gullah dialogue. The musical score composed by John Barnes utilized various Western African and Middle Eastern instruments and sounds.
Daughters of the Dust premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Cinematography. When it was picked up by Kino International for distribution, Dash became the first African-American woman to have a feature film shown nationally in the U.S., as well as playing at international festivals. In 2004 the film was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. In recent years its influence can be seen in Béyonce's Lemonade longform music video, as well as Jafa himself shooting music videos for her sister Solange.
Running time is approx. 110 minutes.
At the turn of the century, an extended African-American family based on the South Carolina Sea Islands prepares to migrate to the mainland and struggles to retain aspects of their cultural identity.
New York City native Julie Dash graduated from the film school at City College of New York, attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and received her MFA from the UCLA Film School, becoming part of the generation of innovative and revolutionary black film students known as the "L.A. Rebellion". A series of short films led to her receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed her to heavily research her family's history in the Gullah culture of the southeastern U.S.
Dash wrote a screenplay inspired by this research, with an immersion into its atmosphere that included a dialogue vernacular specific to the region. With her husband, cinematographer Arthur Jafa, began raising money to shoot the script. With help from the National Endowment for the Arts, they raised $40,000 and shot on location, managing to record a sizable portion of the story. Despite their inexperience and indifference from Hollywood, a screening of the sample footage at the Sundance Film Festival attracted the interest of PBS's American Playhouse, which funded the rest of the shoot for a high six-figures.
The crew included acclaimed black visual artists Kerry James Marshall and Michael Kelly Williams as production designer and art director, respectively. A big challenge for Jafa was finding a film stock that would capture the darker complexions of his actors while avoiding overexposure due to the white dresses worn by most of the women throughout the film. Finding Kodak film optimized for a lighter skin tone, he shot tests using various brands, stocks, and setups, eventually setting on German-made Agfa film. Jafa also experimented with handcranking cameras to achieve variations in speed for certain shots.
With a cast of veterans unknown outside the black independent film scene, Dash had all her actors train with a dialect coach to learn the Gullah-influenced dialogue. The sets were built with available materials akin to what the residents of the area would have had at the time. Dash gave specific focus to the indigo-dyeing process common to settlers in the region. At one point Hurricane Hugo disrupted the production, forcing the cast and crew to evacuate the location, which upon their return had been radically altered.
Dash received a Rockefeller grant to sustain the film through the long post-production process. Her lyrical visual approach containing elements of various religious texts and rituals, combined with the story's abstract, non-linear structure gives the film a distinct aesthetic stamp, underlined further by her decision not to include subtitles for the Gullah dialogue. The musical score composed by John Barnes utilized various Western African and Middle Eastern instruments and sounds.
Daughters of the Dust premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Cinematography. When it was picked up by Kino International for distribution, Dash became the first African-American woman to have a feature film shown nationally in the U.S., as well as playing at international festivals. In 2004 the film was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. In recent years its influence can be seen in Béyonce's Lemonade longform music video, as well as Jafa himself shooting music videos for her sister Solange.
Running time is approx. 110 minutes.
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