It was such a privilege to be onstage (with Sam Fragoso and Chaz Ebert) to interview pioneering film director Julie Dash after the screening of her sui generis masterpiece, the 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. It was the first film directed by an African-American woman to get a wide theatrical release (We shouldn’t be proud of ourselves for this. We should be ashamed). Roger Ebert championed it strongly – both in print and on television – and Dash never forgot him for that. He made it his personal business to get the word out about this unique film.
Daughters of the Dust, narrated by an “unborn child,” takes place in 1902 on the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast. A Gullah family, including the first generation born free after the abolition of slavery, gather together one last time before some of them move to the mainland (i.e. “North). Some will stay behind. In the meantime, they gather on the beach for a picnic, and a visiting photographer poses them on the sand. It is the end of an era. But what about continuity with the past? And the future? Who holds the memories of a family? A people? What is lost when you sever those ties? Dash’s style is lyrical and visual. It’s one of those rare films where
1. If you freeze-frame it at any point throughout, the image is going to be beautiful, memorable, iconic. The images make you catch your breath because you haven’t seen them before. Ever.
2. A mere screengrab will tell you what film it’s from. Every single frame is instantly identifiable. The DNA fingerprint of the film – and Dash’s EYE – is so itself.
Dash had initially wanted to make it as a silent film. The Gullah community maintains their connection to pre-slavery West African traditions, and speak in a dialect all their own. At times, the actors in Daughters of the Dust are subtitled. Other times not. But you get the gist.
Two years ago, for the film’s 25th anniversary, Daughters of the Dust was restored and re-released, bringing a wave of fresh publicity. (Here’s a wonderful interview with Julie Dash in Film Comment at that time.)
I saw the film back in 1992 when it was released. I had just moved to Chicago. I never forgot that first viewing. The film is so unlike anything else you’ve ever seen. It’s like reading James Joyce. He “made it new.” Julie Dash made a movie without having conventional directorial concerns at the forefront. She set about to make a movie her own way, in her own voice, and in so doing … makes most other movies look simplistic, conventional, LAZY. We have this amazing tool: a movie camera, and – for the most part – we have used it in the most literal way. Who made UP all these rules? (In a way, Daughters of the Dust was a good comparison piece to A Page of Madness, the Japanese silent film screened the day before.)
Julie Dash was there for the entirety of the film festival. (So were a couple of the other guests, including Gregory Nava, director of Selena, and Kogonada, director of Columbus). She participated in panels. I ran into her in the elevator at the hotel. So once we all got onstage, it was a nice continuation of what had been going on for the entire festival.
The QA was amazing. There’s such a lot of ground to cover. Sam Fragoso and I had a small pow-wow beforehand, so we could kind of parcel out our approach. He’d ask her the career questions, I’d ask the questions about the film itself. I think it worked really well! I got to ask her about her choices, why she made those choices, choices which seemed so baffling to the producers, to some of the audiences too. We had never seen African-Americans like this before on film. As far as film goes, you’d think African-Americans only existed in the 1860s or the 1960s. During its first release, people were so “thrown” by the white Gibson Girl dresses. It’s as though their minds have been formed only by cinema’s extremely limited portrayal of African-Americans. Every choice she made – the white dresses, the blue-stained hands from the indigo vats – came from her research, and her desire to open up the cinematic world to include people who had always been there.
There’s one dissolve I hadn’t picked up on in my other times seeing it (it’s a film that really rewards repeat viewings). Nana Peazant holds out both her hands, separating them a little bit, palms facing inward. Dash then slowly dissolves to the beach, where girls in white dresses cavort by the water – and the girls on the beach are contained in the ghostly space between Nana Peazant’s hands, a visual moment showing how our ancestors care for us and watch over us, hold us in their hands.
It’s such a singular vision, her film, and it was so great talking about it.
Also, of course, we discussed BEYONCE. Beyonce’s “Lemonade” dropped with no warning. Instant reactions from critics noticed the multiple homages to Daughters of the Dust throughout.
Fans (presumably young fans) went searching for information about Julie Dash’s film, and in the process crashed Julie Dash’s website! Dash had no idea “Lemonade” was even dropping, or what “Lemonade” even was. Nobody had said, “Hey … Beyonce has this thing which is basically a tribute to Daughters of the Dust.” Dash said she started watching “Lemonade” – and at first she was looking for references to Daughters of the Dust – but then forgot all about it because she got hooked into the images and the narrative. What a huge compliment.
I also loved her anecdote about being shown Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin in a film class when she was young. At first, all the students were complaining about it audibly: “This is a silent film? It’s black and white! Oh, come ON!!”
She said, “And after 10 minutes we all stopped complaining and got sucked into the story.”
A formative moment about the power of film.
And here’s Mitchell on the film and the QA:
2:30pm…a screening of “Daughters of the Dust” with director and pioneer, Julie Dash, in the house. It was preceded by the Siskel & Ebert episode where the film was reviewed. Roger Ebert reviewed the film THREE times to insure that it would be seen and that Julie’s voice would be heard. This is a singular and seminal film. Visual storytelling at its most poetic and visceral. The golden light. The stunning cinematography. The costumes. The pace. The music. There are moments where the accents are so thick that we cannot fully understand the words being spoken, and we are not supposed to. We either understand the feelings or it’s simply none of our business…or both. Gorgeous. Ms. Dash, like Ms. DuVernay, spoke of her love and gratitude to Roger Ebert for being a champion of new and important filmmakers. She made a film like NO OTHER; the influence is undeniable, yet she was not flooded with offers like many of her white male contemporaries? Sexist? Yup. Racist?? Definitely. She spoke of empowering, as a teacher, young woman of color to tell their stories. Sheila O’Malley along with Chaz Ebert and another colleague ran the QA…the best of fest IMHO!! So much craft and theory and wisdom to impart and the most thrilling was when she spoke of the day that Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” dropped and it crashed her website. If you haven’t seen “Daughters of the Dust” then you don’t know how much of an homage Beyoncé’s artful film is to Julie’s vision. So many people read about the influence and it crashed the site. Julie Dash, speaking on art and history and culture praised Beyoncé as an artist, including her in the intellectual discussion of modern artistic expression. It was THRILLING!!!
A total thrill.
, by Tom Wolfe. Somehow, unbelievably, I have never read this. Shocker: it’s as good as everyone says. I am fascinated by those, like Wolfe, who can look around – in the middle of a crazy moment – and see (or at least take a stab at) what might really be happening. On a Wolfe kick. Just read his first collection of essays too, 
. He has an extremely aggressive in-your-face style. You NOTICE it. For me, it works, especially in this early material. It makes you feel like you are actually on Ken Kesey’s Day-Glo bus. The “scene” depicted is so unappealing to me it actually borders on the violently unpleasant. The togetherness of it all … it’s stifling. Wolfe senses in the dynamic some of the dangers which would eventually become clear just one year after the book’s publication, when Manson and his merry band of lunatics slaughtered a bunch of strangers. Wolfe can sense what might be coming. At any rate, I’m having a blast with it. 
. Holy mackerel, this volume is gigantic. And long overdue (total understatement). The Sylvia Plath Estate has had such a stranglehold on actual exploration of this important artist’s work and life. That is now changing. Never fear: Frieda Hughes is in charge! She is not afraid. As of now, all we have had, in terms of Sylvia’s correspondence, is the wretchedly and dishonestly edited volume Letters Home, brought out by Sylvia’s poor mother who – naturally, although annoyingly – felt very defensive. It’s a crazy volume, so filled with ellipses that you know the entire thing is a lie, or at least so sanitized as to be worthless. But when it’s all you have, you dig in, you read it obsessively. But that’s been it. Shocking. But now, here is volume 1 of Plath’s correspondence. Starting with her letters home from summer camp as a child. There’s even a surviving letter to her father, who died when she was young. It’s, frankly, incredible, to read these childish letters, filled with stamp-collecting, poetry, and illustrations, listed out by the editors. Sylvia loved to sketch. It’ll take me forever to get through is, but I am soaking it in. 
, by Franz Kafka. I spent January to April reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a couple of pages each morning, read out loud. (It’s the only way to go.) That book is one of the reading experiences of a lifetime. It’s shockingly easy once you actually submit to it. It’s not hard at all. It’s not as “hard” as Ulysses often is. Sure, some passages are dense, and you have to squint to figure out what the joke is (because it’s all a joke) … but in general, it’s a very simple book, and the whole point is to futz around with language. That’s it. At any rate, it took up so much time that when I finished it I wanted to take a small break in the fiction department. There are a couple of other BIG novels I want to read, but not now. Hence: Kafka’s slim book. Which I’ve read before. I’ll finish it in the next couple of days. It’s such a perfect representation of paranoia. Of fears of bureaucracy. Of not being “in” on … whatever “it” is. 
