"Daughters of the Dust"

Daughters of the Dust, a film by Julie Dash explores the theme of the importance of knowing one's heritage and using it as a way of recognizing the importance of family and tradition. This theme is surfaced from the use of the setting, costumes, and the acting/blocking style. The setting of the film for instance, is on an island not far from the shores of the mainlainds of South Carolina and Georgia. For the bulk of the film, most if not all of the action takes place on the same beach. This is significant because much of the plot involves characters either wanting to leave the island for good or coming back to visit. However, the beach is a common ground for al of the family members both old and young who share most of their time together there. In several recurring seens, characters run across the sands of the beach in enjoyment showing how the island symbolizes the strand that links them all together as family.
Dash also uses costumes to emphasize the importance of family tradition and essentially, unity. We see this through the repetition of the color white in all of the costumes. From the youngest children to the oldest, all of the characters where some form of white. For instance, the girls wear long plain white dresses as well as their mothers. The young boys wear white shirts and the men wear dark pants ad white shirts. This choice of color in their costumes shows to be a visual representation of the family's togetherness and suggests that unification is a significant part of the Gullah culture.
Lastly, the stylistic acting and blocking used in the film further employs this same theme. The style of acting is very theatrical throughout the film. Specificaly during a scene where Nana, the matriarch speaks to the rest of the family about leaving their values behind to start a new life on mainlands and how that shouldn't forget about their strong heritage. During this scene, her words are filled with conviction and wisdom and are expressed through her poignant body language. In the same scene, one of the male characters, Eli dramatically falls to the ground in rage and reaches out his arms while exasperating his deep emotions and crying. The theatrical styled acting in the film is used as a medium to express the characters since of pride in their heritage and their constant need to be unified.