Gullah Culture In The Film, Daughters Of The Dust

Daughter of the Dust has a significant place in the history of black filmmaking since it was the first film directed by an African American female director with a theatre release. Daughters of the Dust, directed by Julie Dash, is a historical film focusing on Gullah culture. The film is centred around the period of The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. The plot follows the Peazant family, whose younger members are preparing to move to the Northern part of America for better opportunities. The movie shows the last gathering of the family before a difficult journey. The tension between generations because of migration is shown through the film. The grandmother of the Peazant family chooses to stay on the island

At the beginning of the scene, Eula says that she will never fish in this water because of the memory of the drowned girl to which Mary asks: 'Isn't this Ibo Landing?' Here Julie Dush uses the historical place where approximately 75 Ibo slaves committed mass suicide after their rebellion on the ship, when the slaves took over a ship and drowned their captors. This tragic accident is referenced in another scene when Eula stands near the water, telling her unborn child: 'When they got through, sizing up the place real good. And seeing what was to come, my grandmother said they turned, all of them, and walked back in the water...'. The last symbol of the past is Nana's hands covered in blue. This symbol also has a historical background since the South was not only famous for cotton production but also for the blue paint called indigo. Indigo production left the permanent blue paint on slave hands, making it a symbol of oppression. In Red, White, and Black Make Blue, Andrea Feeser says, 'the indigo blue signifies that the slaves were physically bound to a staple they cultivated'. Daughter of the Dust also hugely concentrates on ordinary life and the struggles of being an African American woman. The film focuses on several practices: rape of black women by a white man and forced reproduction. Eli's wife Eula is a symbol of the theme of rape which constantly happened not only during slavery but also after the Civil War. A nameless white man raped Eula and now she is expecting a child. The whole situation provokes conflict in Eli because he does not feel like the child and his wife are truly his: "I don't feel like she mine no mo Eli's conflict can be interoperated from two perspectives: first of all, the simple belief of ownership of a loved person, and another interpretation might be connected with a history. Dorothy Roberts in the book Killing The Black Body describes the enormous