Дочери пыли Дочери Пыли (Docteri Pyli)

1991 film by Julie Dash

Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 independent film written, directed and produced by Julie Dash and is the first feature film directed by an African American woman to be theatrically released in the United States. Set in 1902, it tells the story of three generations of Gullah (also known as Geechee) women in the Peazant family on Saint Helena Island as they prepare to migrate off the island, out of the Southern United States, and into the North. The film received critical praise for its lush visuals, Gullah language dialogue and non linear storytelling. The cast features Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbara O, Trula Hoosier, Vertamae Grosvenor, and Kaycee Moore and was filmed on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. Daughters of the Dust was selected for the Sundance 1991 dramatic competition. Director of photography Arthur Jafa won the top cinematography prize. The film is also known for being the first by an African American woman to gain a general theatrical release. Dash has written two books about Daughters of the Dust, one about making the film, co authored with Toni Cade Bambara and bell hooks, and one novel, a sequel set 20 years after the film's narrative. In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." For its 25th anniversary, Daughters of the Dust was restored and re released in 2016 by the Cohen Media Group.

Daughters of the Dust is set in 1902 among the members of the Peazant family, Gullah islanders who live at Ibo Landing on Dataw Island (St. Simons Island), off the Georgia coast. Their ancestors were brought there as enslaved people centuries ago, and the islanders developed a language—known as Gullah or Sea Island Creole English—and culture that was creolized from West Africans of Ibo, Yoruba, Mende, and Twi origin, along with some influence from the Bakongo of central Africa as well as the cultures and languages of the British Isles, with the common variety of English being the superstratum in this case Developed in their relative isolation of large plantations on the islands, the enslaved peoples' unique culture and language have endured over time. Their dialogue is in Gullah creole. As the story developed for more than 10 years, Dash clarified her artistic vision and together with Arthur Jafa, her cinematographer and co producer, she put together a short film to use for marketing. She initially was rejected by Hollywood executives, as this was to be her first full length film. Dash said they thought it was "too different" as she thought their reaction was part of a systematic exclusion of black women from Hollywood. Persisting, Dash finally got $800,000 financing from the PBS series American Playhouse in 1988.

With funding secured, Dash and Casting Director Len Hunt, cast a number of veterans of black independent cinema in various roles, as a tribute to the work they had done and the sacrifices they had made to work in independent films. She would hire a mix of union and non union members for her crew, with the latter being cast for their familiarity with the Gullah language, which the main actors would have to learn. Rogers had one previous film credit with School Daze and was known for her work as a playwright and vocalist, while Jones had worked previously with Dash in the short Diary of an African Nun (1977) and Grosvenor was a culinary anthropologist with a Gullah background.

Director of photography Arthur Jafa began shooting on location at St. Helena Island and Hunting Island, off the South Carolina coast. Principal photography lasted 28 days, with a majority of the time spent shooting at exterior locations, such as the beach, in front of rustic homes, or further inland, where Nana's home is located near the island's graveyard. The sets, including cabins, the graveyard, and a figurative sculpture dock at Igbo Landing, were constructed mostly using materials the Gullah would have had available at the time of the story. The costumes feature the women in long indigo dyed and bright white dresses. The majority of closeups in the film are on the women, and the majority of dialogue is spoken by women and girls. During production on Hunting Island, the crew was evacuated to Charleston, South Carolina to avoid the incoming Hurricane Hugo. Hugo changed track and scored a direct hit on Charleston, causing a historic amount of damage. Often, the cast would have to come to set on a last minute notice because of the environmental factors that took place.

Editing began in January 1990, and it took nearly a year to complete the film. Dash chose not to use subtitles, preferring to have audiences be immersed in the language. The soundtrack was composed by John Barnes, featuring a blend of Synclavier percussion with traditional instruments, including the Middle Eastern santour, and African bata and talking drums.

Daughters of the Dust screened at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Excellence in Cinematography Award. It was released by Kino International—the first feature film made by an African American woman to be distributed theatrically in the United States. The Boston Globe called it "Mesmerizing a film rich with [black women's] faces, voices and movement." Stephen Holden of The New York Times lauded the film's languid pace and "spellbinding visual beauty" while noting that its unconventional narrative structure made the characters in relation to the story at times difficult to follow. Critic Stephen Holden said the individual stories in the film formed a "broad weave in which the fabric of daily life, from food preparation to ritualized remembrance, is ultimately more significant than any of the psychological conflicts that surface." He hailed Dash as a "strikingly original film maker." Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times gave the film three stars out of a possible four. He called the Daughters of the Dust a tone poem about emotions rather than telling a conventional narrative, and said while made on a small budget "it doesn't feel cheap" due to excellent use of cinematography, wardrobe and music. He also highlighted the screenplay's Gullah dialect: "The fact that some of the dialogue is deliberately difficult is not frustrating, but comforting; we relax like children at a family picnic, not understanding everything, but feeling at home with the expression of it." In 2022, Daughters of the Dust was named at number 60 in the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time list selected by critics and published every 10 years since 1952. Upon its 2016 re release, The Village Voice review commended the film's "stunning motifs and tableaux, the iconography seemingly sourced from dreams as much as from history and folklore." The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw called the film "mysterious, fabular and sometimes dreamlike," comparing it to Chekhov or a performance of Shakespeare's Tempest. Despite the positive reviews, Dash was unable to make another feature length motion picture within the mainstream Hollywood system. She concluded industry executives were put off by the film's unconventional form, stating in 2007: "Hollywood and mainstream television are still not quite open to what I have to offer." However, Dash would go on to a productive television career.

For its 25th anniversary, the Cohen Media Group restored Daughters of the Dust for a screening at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival and a theatrical release. When Beyoncé's acclaimed visual album Lemonade aired on HBO and online in the spring of that year, critics noted that Lemonade made several visual references to Daughters of the Dust. Beyoncé's modern take featured young women, some in long white dresses, walking toward a beach or settled on the front porch of a rustic island cabin. The homage brought attention to the film in articles for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, NPR, and Essence. With new acclaim, Daughters of the Dust was re released in theaters in November 2016, along with a new trailer and poster.