Daughters of the Dust at Sheffield Showroom
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
Coming up at Sheffield’s Showroom is Julie Dash’s lyrical ’90s film Daughters of the Dust. An avowed influence on Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, Dash’s supremely original film follows three generations of women in the Pezant family in South Carolina in 1902. The film catches the family at a crucial moment, as they prepare to migrate north and meet the modern world, endangering the well-preserved Gullah culture that they have inherited from their West African slave ancestors. Filmed on the secluded sea islands off the coast of South Carolina, the use of dialect, slow-motion camerawork and languid pacing all contribute to a dreamlike, otherworldly quality that is hard to shake.
