"There exists a fear of black people using our culture tomake statements in codes. It's the modern variation on the fear that ledslaveholders to take our drums away." --Julie Dash. On a summer day in 1902, the Peazant family prepares to leavetheir island home off the Georgia coast, and leave a way of life towhich there is no return on the American mainland. With authenticity inevery detail, including the Gullah language with its syntax and cadencerentitive of West African influence, Julie Dash tells her story in thecircular manner of a West African griot or storyteller-"the way anold relative would retell it, not linear but always coming backaround." A film experienced in sequences, from the perspectives ofseveral generations of women including an unborn daughter, Daughters ofthe Dust creates a fabric of universal themes: the conflicts betweenpersonal and collective history, and between spiritual and industriallife; and the strength of bonds between sisters, daughters and mothers.In Daughters of the Dust, Dash creates her own cinematic codes, achallenge that faces all women filmmakers." --LisanneSkyler