Let me start out by saying I'm a black man. I might not have any business trying to figure out what Ms. Dash is trying to say. I do know what does and doesn't work for me. I need subtitles. I don't need obfuscation which I felt was the basic strategy employed here. There may be a point in confusing the audience to a certain point but eventually we'll need some things cleared up. This is what I got from the film:The slave trade continued awhile longer on these islands. I wasn't sure if slavery continued longer here than anywhere else(longer than in Galveston, TX). Forced incestuous mating and breeding took place here as well. The internal struggle to enter a new phase of life in a new place was affecting the entire family. The basic "action" in the film is the attempt to have a final family get-together without too much conflict and altercation. There are no white people in the film. There are a few Muslims and one Native American that is a key figure in the story. As pure visual experience the film had some wonderful, fleeting moments. Tommy Redmond Hicks is in it. Why did the light skinned girl run away near the end? The actress doing the child voice over was awful.It doesn't work.

I really enjoyed this movie. Its been a few years since I've seen it and I saw it twice. As a matter of fact, I'll rent it again or buy it if I can. No plot (I don't get the other poster comments). The movie was about a family and every day life as I saw it. I enjoyed it because it was pleasant, no guns, no thugs (lol), just a simple movie about a family and a group of people I knew nothing about. I still want to visit that area in South Carolina one day. I also enjoyed the movie because the actors are not well known actors in my eyes. I get tired of seeing the same actors in movies. I will do some research on the Gullah (sp) people.

This is one of the finest black films of the last twenty years. Julie Dash has created an evocative portrait of African American life that still holds an African past in the cradle of everyday life. The film is also a brilliant depiction of gender relations in black communities. Daughters of the Dust presents a vital, spiritual, and haunting portrait of black women, their agency and their connection to a nurturing ancestral past. Very few films about black people seriously explore the deep spiritual connections between Old and New World, and fewer still look so carefully at a particular community. The Gullah people of the Sea Islands are a group that remains largely unknown in both mainstream and black culture. As group that has clearly adapted to life in a new place, they still demonstrate powerful connections to an African past. In their adaptation and connection, they show the strength and resilience of black communities and cultures.

"Daughters of the Dust" isn't an easy work, but it's a very fine accomplishment, and one of the most important African American films of the last 20 years. Julie Dash has chosen to share with her audience a chapter of black history that is still new to most white Americans, the internal issues that came with Black Americans as they made their way North in the years between 1900 and 1920. The separation from the soil, the divorce from those remnants of West African culture that survived through the holocaust of slavery. The psychic tearing of the transition from rural to urban culture. The skin game that Yellow Mary and other "fair skinned" Black people had to play in order to survive in White America. If the film is boring to many, let it be plainly said that it is boring for many because the film maker courageously chose to examine a piece of history that most White Americans- and many Black ones- no longer care much about. If you want to be entertained, this isn't a film you'll enjoy. "Daughters of the Dust" offers instead an opportunity to probe deep, to look close at the dreamy quality of an internal life, and a balanced relationship with the earth, that most of our peoples in the United States have chosen to leave behind them for exactly the wrong reasons. Let those who have difficulty thinking about these things stick to action films. "Daughters of the Dust" is about something more akin to the sense of wonder that's being rapidly stamped out of many of us in the name of mom, apple pie, and the gross national product. It is worth not one, but many viewings. Julie Dash has created a masterpiece of American cinema.