Daughters of the Dust (1991)

豆知識

• 製作費：$80万
• 撮影地：サウスカロライナ州

Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 American independent drama film written, directed, and produced by Julie Dash. It is the first feature film directed by an African-American woman to receive a theatrical release in the United States. Set in 1902, the film centers on three generations of Gullah women from the Peazant family on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, as they prepare to migrate from the rural South to the North.

Production

Originally conceived in 1975, Dash planned to make a short film with no dialogue as a visual account of a Gullah family's preparation to leave their Sea Island home to a new life in the North. She was inspired by her father's Gullah family, who migrated to New York City in the early 20th century during the Great Migration of African Americans from the southern states.

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.

For the sake of authenticity and poetry, the characters from the island speak in Gullah dialect. Ronald Daise, author of Reminiscences of Sea Island Heritage (1987), was the dialect coach for her actors, none of whom knew Gullah at the start of production.

The narrative structure is non-linear, of which Dash explained:

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