 So, okay first feature film directed by an African-American woman like no big deal In 1991, but obviously a film like that or like any film which is part of what we're gonna talk about today What it means to make a film? Takes a long time. It's not a fast thing. It doesn't happen. You know 1990 release 1991 It's not how it goes. So as we know you wrote direct and produced Alva starred as Yula Pizant and AJ was our DP and co-producer, I believe and so we're gonna talk a little bit today about these various roles And what it means to make a movie and what it meant and still means to make have made that movie So Julie, I'm gonna start with you How did where did daughters come from? That's a very broad question. So you can answer it as broadly as you like Okay, it came from My wanting to create a film of that was an authentic African-American film a film that was Evocative of the Goliagichi culture In a way that we've never seen it Anything like that depicted before and also because my father comes from that region and his family And I had a lot of curiosity about the culture growing up in New York City Okay What is the culture what is Gichi culture the gala and the Gichi are the descendants of African-Americans who worked on the plantations in the sea islands of the South and they lived on the islands and because of their The islands were remote and they were separated from the mainland They were able to maintain much of what the ancestors brought with them from the various West African countries from which they were taken Okay, so you guys shot For 28 days, which sounds incredibly short to me. Is that is that short in film land? Yeah, right. That's very short 28 days on St. Helena Island off South Carolina out South Carolina's coast So before we get into that experience just how did this crew of people and I know it's a much larger crew of people But how did this crew of people come about how an Alva you can tell us yourself AJ? You can tell us yourself How did you find Julie and vice versa? Julie Julie found me great. How? Through Lisa and rodeo Caldonia and AJ and Greg Tate. I Don't know if Greg Tate is here, but Personal shout out. Thank you Greg Tate because I feel like you brought me to all these people in some way shape or form through your work And through your person Continuum of I was thinking about that yesterday when I was watching people speak and Having grown up in New York myself and having attended the studio Museum of Harlem Early on in my leg last year in high school and having just Come in contact with so many different people who Impacted so deeply upon my life and They're all here this weekend And so it was it was kind of like a natural occurrence of that we all came together I'm gonna interject very quickly just to say we had a day-long symposium here yesterday Which if some of you were here, it was incredible You know that if you weren't here Because it was recorded and you can watch it online some maybe I don't know how but Someone will know how And we had a really wonderful day where we talked had different people talking about their different experiences So that's just the context for what she meant for yesterday, but go ahead Well, maybe I'll just provide a little maybe nuts and bolts context When I first met Julie, I guess I'd seen illusions and I think I'd seen Diver of Africa none too, but I know I'd seen four women and Over the years she had had a Project that was supposed to have four parts if I remember correctly correct me It was gonna be a omnibus film Anthology film that had four sections dealing with black women at four different points in History that was good. She had done illusions which was set in the 40s She had a script for one that was set in the 60s. That was one that was set There was one that was set in what was there in the future, which I think was 2010 or something Way in the future Science fiction story way in the future and and there was one that was set at the turn of the century And that was what really start grew to be daughters because I remember Julie showing me the script And at a certain point I was like wow just seems like you're doing so much work on this Maybe maybe it should just be a feature and it kind of went back and forth and at a certain point It just seemed like that made the most sense So I always like to think it started as a seed for a four-part thing and eventually just grew into a feature on this Because it was Eli and Eula at first Before became daughters of dust and Eli and Eula are the couple Eli. Well, Eli and Eula So Alva, can you tell us about so okay Julie found you fine But what were you doing at the time that Julie found you and how yeah, what did it mean to you to come to be in daughters? I was performing working as a musician composer improviser in downtown New York scene and Performing a lot at the knitting factory the kitchen ps122 and Then you know Lisa and I Were collaborating and we formed this group Lisa's Lisa Jones for everyone's reference Author playwright, etc. Yeah Yeah, and actually she and I we went to high school together and I'm sorry Kelly Jones And I went to high school together and Kelly and Lisa are sisters and so We all hung out together and so One of our one of our performances was reviewed in high performance and that's a couple and I know there was a photograph and I I think that I remember Julie telling me that someone saw my foot with AJ saw my photograph and He So anyway from that image that was the image that was the vision of Eula so That's how I came to the This project And a lot of these actually these images are in the show upstairs on the fourth floor if you haven't seen them including This one that you're talking about and the review and high performance which was written by Lowry Stokes Tim's who is an incredible curator And shining light in this world and in this field. So that is amazing I So like one thing one thing I remember Like think even just running through the show really quickly and seeing just the photo from the high performance and then that spray from interview magazine That was a moment. You know, there was a lot of the excitement at that moment because you had BRC Public enemy spikes. She's got to have it. That was huge It was just a huge moment and like in a lot of ways I always felt like daughters was this project that was trying to bridge You know, if maybe schism is strong too strong of a word But to bridge like the black LA rebellion sort of film set and the sort of spike and post spike Sims film set because I also say despite with like, I mean you guys all knew each other I mean, I think the first time I met Albert is down in Atlanta. You guys were on school days if I remember correctly And and so Doris had a lot of things built in the project in the structure of the project that was supposed to You know be like inside inside kind of stuff like the female cast like yellow mare Barbara Jones Was a very not not her that's Casey But Barbara Jones was a very iconic figure in the UCLA rebellion thing from Bush mom and things like that Casey Moore was a female lead and killer. She and the grandmother Is going bad now was Was in passing do the a quarterly day was in passing through and so we then at the same time wanted to have like You know, Tom Lee Jones who plays a photographer. She's got to have it Alva had been in school days and draw was supposed to be in it She was actually the initial person who was supposed to ride away on the horse, but they were shooting More better blues at the time the schedule kept changing We just had to Recast so so it was supposed to have all these figures that was sort of iconically that was supposed to Make it clear that the choices that we were making what we're trying to do And so speaking I was gonna ask you Julie about the LA rebellion actually and about your kind of relationship to that earlier generation of filmmakers and your own kind of Trajectory as a filmmaker, so thank you AJ for setting it up Okay, so when I arrived at UCLA I was coming out of AFI the America Film Institute and While I was at AFI I actually began working with Charles Burnett and Larry Clark and and they were part of the LA Rebellion And that's how I met Barbara Oh who played yellow Mary and who also played in Diary of an African nun And I also met Coralie Day who eventually would play Nana Pizant so The LA rebellion of course was not called the LA rebellion while we were there that came years later, but it was a a Time when a group of independent filmmakers we were big making very bold moves and experimenting with storytelling and Barbara McCullough was one of them and Barbara McCullough is part of this exhibition Barbara McCullough was there and Barbara McCullough and I eventually we went to the con film festival and And and to the market and put on a show without with films of the people who were in the LA rebellion And we did this in 1981 So it was It was a great time to work with people and to and to be inspired and to and to build our confidence And I knew that I always wanted to work with the actors who participated with us in all of our Independent films that took so long to make and so That's how we we had them in also in daughters of the dust And so can you talk a little bit about the kind of because one of the things that's really I think still striking about Daughters and that we don't still see very frequently in film is The kind of very non-traditional structure the narrative structure the way that then there is a narrative Obviously there is a story that's happening There's forward motion, but it the film happens in a very short period of time in in the character's lives but also just the experience of watching it is a very kind of nonlinear ethereal kind of ceremonial, yeah Can you talk a ride of passage? Yeah. Yeah, can you talk about how you came to that and Whether that was always a part of it and yeah. Yeah Well, like I mentioned we were looking at At the time the independent filmmakers we were looking at various ways of telling a story that is not necessarily told in a Western way, so for me The structure that I use in daughters is my griot structure my griot story structure And it's told in a way that a african griot would recall and recount a family's history It's told in and so it was very important that this structure had a very specific look to It, you know, so we study tableaus AJ and I study tableaus and also the production designer Kerry James Marshall So the three of us pretty much worked what I heads together for a long time before we began shooting To come up with a design a style of design that was complimentary and supportive of the Structure of the story of the vignettes that we would be showing and telling And so AJ can you from the perspective of a DP? Can you tell us with some and you know, can you speak for Kerry a little bit? See not here. What are some of the things speaking for care? Okay, Kerry, we invite he was he was busy, but we invited him so it's not that we didn't want him Don't don't get me wrong but yeah, just what are some of the the very kind of Kind of nuts and bolts things that you guys did on that end to create this vision and to create this overall structure Well, um, I made Kerry just because Kerry had just had his first show at the Copland Gallery in LA Yeah, and it was just there was an interview There was an interview in the LA weekly and it was just really funny even now just thinking about it It just makes me laugh He just said a lot of really funny things in it and I was just like who is this guy? You know and I think I asked around and actually being Caldwell who also was at UCLA with you and those guys So yeah, I know Kerry James. He just finished out with this Art Institute And so he gave me Kerry's number and I called Karen we just hit it off immediately and I think over the next few weeks me and Kerry was hanging pretty tight and at a certain point I was just like you I think we should ask Kerry to maybe do the art direction on this and I'm just say has he ever done? I was like No, but But then neither had I But I just know Kerry is like anybody who knows Kerry is Even if you know of him, he's legendarily Therald let's say he's very super super thorough So it was clear that if he committed and you know, I agreed to do it that he would do it do a great job I think I don't think we knew we were getting the master of mastery or anything at the time, you know I like to say he might be the batting percentage wise he may be the greatest Production design in the history of cinema because he's only done two films doors of dust and sank. Oh, no He did praise house for me also features My features are So so like So basically early on if it was just you know me and Julie had a very intense back and forth But she said we had all these pictures that we would trade back and forth and then Kerry just kind of got looped into that So it was like You know real trying elation like we went down the first time because we actually shot twice We were trying to raise money. We had moved Atlanta at that point and we tapped out at about $35,000 if I remember correctly, and I remember us having this conversation like should we wait for another granting cycle It was like now, let's just go for it. We knew we didn't have enough to finish it But we might have shot 40% Was close to the 40% you don't think 10% no because we didn't we couldn't use any of that footage because we changed the costumes Yeah, I know I know but I mean but we shot we shot a big percentage of this We shot a big percentage of the script actually though, but but the point being is that Based on we got that footage together and then right afterwards. This was just Kismet really Because Julia cut a trailer together for it and they had this thing at Sundance. It was a women producers come Yeah, we saw but yeah, exactly because I remember the first time we shot We had your alpha stomach was too big But like we went down like with a micro crew though it was just me Kerry Julie Bernard it was like really maybe five six or seven people maybe in the crew and in the cast Kerry came down and he brought Cheryl with him who really wasn't in the film at that point Kerry kept saying I think you should consider her. She has that look. She I think she has that look And I remember Greg came down and Suzanne miles a couple of friends came down just to visit while we're shooting and we shot what we did and then Julie cut the trailer together and Lynn and then it was Lynn Holt's at American Playhouse who American Playhouse had just begun doing theatrical films. They did about three or four of them Because they were known for doing television movies They did a short series of theatrical films and we were able to Convince Lynn host and and Lindsay law Well finance daughters of the dust like my early funny story I remember about the structures and just to go back for one second to the unorthodox nature of the structure is like I think they said something like okay We want to do this film and then Julie was doing rewrites or something and we went to New York and met with Lindsey And they were like yeah, we love it. It's great, but we have some problems with the structure It seems like the film has three endings It is and it does it is three times, you know, it ends When they have the big Bible get together then it ends when the kids they ride off on the horse and the family leaves and then It has that last and with the unborn child and stuff and I just remember distinctly saying to him It was kind of I think it was inspired, but I said to them I said, oh, no, this is like James Brown You know how when he finishes the show On core it kind of goes off and then he throws a cape off and then it comes back And they said, oh, okay, and we never had We never had any more trouble with them regarding the structure, so they sort of just bowed down That's a true story True story. Well, it's a good story So you did y'all you got your financing And you went that you'd already shot a bit but then you went down again with now your your real cast and you're you know You're real maybe had your real cast real costume real cost. Oh, yeah, sorry. I was gonna ask about that What the costumes are such an iconic? I mean we can see them here. It's such a striking image these these dresses and the hairdos and I mean there's so much to daughters that is Obviously very very inspiring to people today. We don't need to explain But so can we talk a little bit mention the hairstyles Pamela Pharrell Is that has a company in Washington DC called corn rows and company? She came down and worked on the heads of everyone and It was he she did a wonderful job. She created new hairstyles in and recreated ancient ones and it was You could talk about You just said worked on the heads not the hair It's a very southern I mean is she is that's a company that's still going cuz yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Good. Thank you I would like to go. No, I mean I've tried to recreate some of the hairstyles without success. So Okay, and then the car, you know, there was one thing, you know, it's funny just thinking about it It really was like I know not to sound too cool by y'all It really was like an effort to include like we just included like anybody. We thought was great We would reach out to them and you know and more often than not they would say, yeah It's just so many people like for example, right Tracy Morris David Hammons has artwork all over the grave She was there every day He has these incredible Arches made out of night train bottles or something he gave us two of those to put in the graveyard and after we shot We were like called David. Hey David. We want to get your art back. She said, oh, man Don't worry about shipping and just keep it keep it and we were just like, man We got to get you thing back. So we finally trudge and got it back to him, but I think about that to this day I Okay, let it go It was about the only way I was gonna get paid on door this so They call it a labor of love for reason but But so and the hair size but the costumes also So what were the original costumes that you didn't end up wanting to use and how did you come to these ones? Well, we had to have our costumes built We were able to see photographs at the pens a cultural center of the period of the time period and we had them recreated or constructed or as they say built and That's what we have now but Excellent well, they're beautiful and out of curiosity Where are the costumes? Well, I have two pieces That I retained One of the pieces since we it was such a low-budget production We had the people who handmade it a costume company. We had to give it back to them, you know That was part of the deal so they could use it so that's in Savannah We had so is in Savannah and in Charleston I Okay, so you get down to St. Helena Island We have two days of a day of pre-production shooting and then I think it we said it was day 12 of shooting in the galleries upstairs Alva's call sheets, which she generously wound but four weeks No, no, you had a lot more but I'm just saying we have two of those days, so I'm just talking about the call sheets so Can you tell us about Alva? Can you tell us about the the days of shooting that you were there? What was it like? for as an actor You can tell the truth. She said well the days of course in film days start very early and It's very dark and very cold and Because it's so cold you have to wear I wore like several layers under my costume And then by the time and also because it was cold and then there are all of these They're not quite gnats, but they're sand. Yeah, no see-eems. No see-eems. Yeah, you don't see them, but they're biting you and And so that yeah, so then we had to so we were wearing like netting Mosquito nets all you're off-camera. We're just like trying to cover ourselves most of the Scenes were shot. They were all shot with natural and natural light with reflectors so Yeah, that was Early days, you know work until the Sun went down and The work on the the dialect that was pretty intense and memorizing all the The soliloquies that was also pretty intense But it was a really It's just really quite beautiful I remember telling Someone I was I Interviewed with someone who was writing for Elm magazine and and I told her I think it's as close to heaven on earth and I'm gonna get because I went to a service on in one of the churches on St. Helena and It was just so profound You know the music was like those old gospel records that my grandmother and my great grandmother had Just that gut bucket like you're hearing like people banging on barrels and playing Banjos and but it was just so pure So and just the sheer beauty of the location and you just really felt you really felt the histories particularly on St. Helena because at the time it was one of the only islands that hadn't been developed by developers making Turning everything into golf courses. So Many of the islands and now are now vacation spots and golf courses So yeah, and is St. Helena Island is that is it like a national park or protected No, but Hunting Island is we shot actually on like five different islands. It was Hunting Island Dota a little bit at a though St. Helena where they had Lance and and Ladies Island, yeah, I think the tree big tree was on ladies island. Yeah And so Alva you mentioned the dialect and so that's something else that really stands out about the film is The dialect that the characters speak in so can you talk we've talked a little bit about how you worked with a dialect coach But can you tell us a little bit about that and who then Julie who that person was and kind of how that all came about That was Ron days And he went on to do gullah gullah Island with his wife Natalie days Ron and Natalie days So he was he not all he worked as a dialect coach And he also he was in the movie as well. Yeah, he was the one we baptized And so as how did what kind of things did you do with him Alva to kind of get yourself up to speed? If the dialect like what were I'm assuming you had exercises, etc. I don't know he translated the Bible into Gullah so He took me through this process of sort of translating all my text all my dialogue into a Gullah dialect and Language I should say really because it's not just a dialect. It's also a language and I think that Myself and all the actors I think took various Took various attempts or did it in various levels. I seem to have went full All out I was all in and I looked back so oh my gosh but I Think it is great that you went all the way in so So, but so what did you have? I mean, what did you do? You just have you read this what he translated for you and you just kind of kept going with that like oh, I'm sorry I Felt to really get at the heart of The the meaning of the core of each scene like I really had to understand what Not just what it meant in English, but just how what it meant and how it was really said in Gullah so I'm just trying I can't even Something like Something trouble for C. I'm trying to remember like, you know, that's that's like difficult for me to see and to understand You know that that would be the translation So yeah, it just was a I Work with Don and then I just spent a lot of time sort of in solitude in my room with the text and also I got to know a couple of families very well and They were Gullah and I Had meals with them and of course going to church. So I I kind of immersed myself in the language and the culture and I actually went down Several times afterwards and after the shooting was over and yeah, so yeah, wonderful. Thank you So AJ you started to tell us about some of the mood and we got a little sand-tracked with Carrie But I like that but I would really love to hear from you like as a DP specifically about the work that you did on this film Well, I've said this before but The primary like well first of all, it's just the whole aesthetic thing, you know Like aesthetically what we're trying to do and in a sense It was very much an extension of the whole UCLA rebellion stuff I studied with Heila Grima at Howard University who was Yes Who was He was a principal. He was a principal member of the UCLA rebellion and so he When I was at Howard University, I went there to study architecture But he had actually gotten a how it maybe three years before I got there It seemed like he had been there forever when I got there, but looking back he'd only been there like three years So he very much came to Howard with the whole ethos I would call it an ethos and the ethos essentially was like, you know same shit I always say now just like how do we make black cinema basic was what it was and so We had already been thinking about and talking about what? You know black cinematography so to speak might be what that might look like and so I highly send me out to LA to work on Charles Burnett's second feature my brother's wedding and that's when Julian and I met actually and and so it was just a continuation of a lot of that kind of thinking and In meeting Carrie to certainly consolidated that I like to think like there's a line of There's a line of thinking regarding how to treat Black people's complexions of film That certainly precedes me, but I know like at Howard we definitely bought it to a certain kind of head a boiling point and And we you know we attempted to do certain things on daughters And I feel like those things have gotten picked up and you can see straight through you know through Malik's work on like belly and X factor in particular straight through Brad's work on a mother George in particular I mean it was funny like we when we did the restoration of daughters You know they asked me oh look at it for the color correction and stuff like this And I went in on the heart the first couple days and I was like okay. I got stopped myself because I realized My whole sense of how I would handle complexion stuff has evolved so much over the last 20 years that I had to actually take a break and step back and just try to get myself more in the head Because I know like me it's you know I think it looks good, and I don't like that, but I would never Do complexions orange like this the orange this Like I really feel like warming up black people's skin. It's completely bound up with white supremacist ideas Just for myself, so I always go more towards the blue thing now blue black thing now So it probably it probably wouldn't look like this if we started again But I like but so but in that in in that kind of thinking there was certain you have these aesthetic ideals Which you can see like in Carrie's work It's just this commitment to putting a black figure at the center of your narrative at the center of your picture and all this kind of Stuff at the center of your narrative And then you have to say well technically how do we pull that off particularly in light of the fact that all the Apparatus all the equipment the film stocks the cameras all those kinds of things were not they didn't evolve in response to optimizing black people's Expressive desires and stuff so you have to go in and in a sense interrogate the apparatus which seemingly would just be Technical and with no ideological presuppositions and stuff, but that's obviously not true at all So like in the most basic level a really really basic example is like with the film stocks Like a lot of times like within the when daughters first came out And I would do talks people will always ask me what film stock that you use And I would always tell people that's the wrong question to ask because the right question would be like Why did you use the film stock that you use because the film stock that we use actually was discontinued right after daughters So it wasn't even available anymore, you know, but Kodak would be the default choice on most films at the time That's funny thinking back Kodak barrel exists anymore But Kodak would be like the default choice But Kodak was engineered to optimize what they call a china doll you may have seen it is like generally Asian woman with a color chart next to her head and The Asian woman's complexion was considered the ideal like in terms of the white complexion That was so it was so it's engineered to optimize that complexion So as soon as you start to fall outside of it, you can't really fall outside of it in terms of being too fair But on the dark end soon as you start to fall outside of you start getting these peculiar looks let's say I remember growing up like looking at Star Trek. Why is your hurrah was like greasy and in the shadow like that? You know It's because of the film stock, you know and that they were lighting for Captain Kirk or whatever And then you just land way over the hell you land, you know Technically speaking So the first thing that we did and Charles was really the first person who like when we did my brother's wedding They shot it on Fuji film stock and that was the first time I can actually remember anybody actively talking about Oh, the film stocks that you choose will predispose What kinds of looks you can get I mean that there's sort of discourse around it That's because we used to do testing at UCLA with various film stocks Larry Clark in particular was a person on passing through It's a very like Roderick Taylor What's Roger Roger young yet a cinematographer amazing amazing amazing work But it's really about making the skin pop in a certain kind of way or do certain kinds of things And so on doors, we just like pick that up. So as soon as you have Dark skin cast and white dresses on the beach in the Sun. That's Immediately a technical problem more than anything else because you have to pick and choose if you expose the costumes properly Then everybody is gonna be like carries paintings like silhouettes Outside in the middle of the day and if you expose people's complexion, there's gonna be like close encounters in the third kind Everybody's gonna like be glowing And so I mean one of the most striking sort of disjunctions of actually being on the set versus seeing the film like people Sometimes say oh those dresses are so white and stuff for anybody who actually was on the set And the dresses were like the colors of this wall. Yeah, we died them. They had to be very dark orange Yeah, you have to dip them when you deal. Yeah, because technically I remember sitting with Alva Trula and Maybe Bob or oh we did these tests and I had them three of them sit in front of a color chart And then we had the dress is died to different levels of darkness and and I expose everybody properly And then I underexposed like six stops and half stop increments And then I had to lab print everything back to perfect and we made a decision based on Okay at this exposure at this certain point. It's gonna optimally capture Alva Barbaro Jones and the costumes in other words We made the costumes darker than they actually were to your eye so that when we overexposed in order to expose The the complexion properly it would burn the color out of the dresses Thank you Yeah, which actually if you remember Arlene Burke's the costume person She was actually upset at first because she didn't understand She had never seen that done before and so she was a little upset She thought we were ruining her her costumes, but actually we were Optimizing them well, and you were optimizing them for to be seen on film Not necessarily by the eye that thank you AJ. That is really incredible and thank you guys for for doing that Like that's a lot of work honestly, and there's a really no. I mean, I'm serious a lot of work to create something Beautiful So we're gonna open it up for a couple of questions from the audience right now And there is a mic over here and Lauren My colleague will facilitate that so if you have a question, please come to the mic I don't know how many we're gonna take so I apologize in advance if the answer is not enough Nobody has any questions. Oh, hey, there you go Pass up this chance It's just such an honor to like talk to you guys today. Thank you so much for making this film It's touched me since I first saw it in college and I mean, I know everyone here feels the same way So just thank you so much So Well, I have like two questions, but I'll just the first one you have this You know narrative this continuous narrative going and I was wondering like Why did you choose to have the? Omnipotent narrative as opposed to letting the dialogue tell the story As far as Like the you know like the Someone talking in their mind sort of the the unborn child telling the story and then you have the the grandma there's sort of you know just Kind of I don't know. We got it. We got it. Okay. Thanks Do you got it? Let me paraphrase what I what I think that you're asking is about the choice to have the film narrated by The unborn child right the kind of omniscient narrator It was several of those it was all this character was narrating the film and telling the story and you know Usually with like a streamlined no story is just being narrated by the great great-grandmother Nana present and the unborn child Okay Well, I you know I was trained formally as a writer And of course, I know that you could only have one narrator in a film But I would decided that this particular story needed needed to be told from the point of view of the eldest Living family member and the youngest and the youngest indeed was the unborn child a child inside of Eula's stomach Yeah, it's parallel dialing dueling dialogue Thank you. I Just want to thank you again. I saw it when it was released Back in the day and it was amazing seeing it again, especially seeing Verda Mae there So I just want to thank you and my question is How did it do you know back when it was first released and and you know it was in theaters and I said I remember seeing it I loved it it changed my life, but I never kind of kept track of you know How did it do and what what impact did it have? It's Interestingly enough it is never there in the 26 years since it was made it is never stopped playing somewhere in the world and When it was playing the first run at the after the film for it It went to the New York Village East and I believe it played for 36 consecutive weeks There were a couple of things like I remember at the time like it started off a film for him It sold out it kept getting extended and then it had to move and I remember people saying like That's normally if you move a film for one thing edit to another if it has a long one That's like the end of it. It just never but they'd never seen a film that move because it moved from that to cinema New York Village East New York Village East exactly and it just kept going, you know Had to move because of the scheduling They just couldn't they couldn't extend it anymore. I did was gonna keep selling out Yeah, and you know, I just remember like in particular In terms of how I did well, you know, that's a that's a complicated kind of question I mean, I think oftentimes like it did amazing given like I Mean, I think like what was something like doors do in the time of social media You know, this was like pre-social media and it was like word of mouth to a large degree people were like really rolling out to see a pretty hardcore and I always think that You know, it's it's the Malcolm Gladwell thing the long tail versus the short tail, you know And basically what he says is like different ways of judging the success of something is commodity because I like I think I mean, maybe it's not to compare daughters to kind of blue But in the sense like the kind of blue was never on the billboards chart It was never like a top 100 or anything like that But it also never went out of print in the last 50 something years So it's a little like that. Maybe you know, it's the hair in the turtle. It's just Still going so in time I feel like this is the part of me That's really proud of it and feels somewhat arrogant about being proud of it It's like that what a lot of films came out in the heyday of the black film thing And they've come and gone and daughters Chugging away still chugging away still, you know creating audiences for itself And in a lot of ways I think still point point of direction, you know in the future a lot of stuff You look back at it. You can't even watch in that since it looks very dated, you know, so anyway, just on the Thank you, and I think agreed we you can be fully proud arrogant or not about it Can we have a next person? Hello, the first thing I'd like to say is I'm very grateful to be here. I remember seeing you Miss Dash on Turner classic movies Standing in for Robert Osborn. I just feel so much more excited to Excellently killed it The most so I was excited about that for a whole lot of other reasons But my question for you is I think more of a logistical one about production and production in that particular location Obviously it was a period piece Did you did you and your cast of crew and cast sort of fit in and meld in quite easily with Whoever was in the local surroundings from something that Miss Rogers had said earlier. It seemed like yes But if you could speak a little bit to that and also did you feel like you bumped into any Hegemonic influences, I guess in terms of maybe like that might have been negative because you were in South Carolina after all Getting permits to film or in any way did you think that based on the geographic? Environment a regional environment. There were any difficulties in getting your work off the ground other than what any filmmaker normally Experiences anyway, okay We went down they knew us by the time we came back the second time and We hired all of the children and the elders were from were locals and They worked with us every day And we also hired a lot of other people who were locals and We bought out the whole hotel there that that royal Frogmore in where we stayed. Wow. We had a lot of people working They embraced us And we embraced them as well the Sea Islands thing is came to Celebrate us. I mean we enjoyed going to their churches. It was just It was it was very much of a community type of filmmaking effort, I think and The caterer a sergeant. What was his name sergeant Smith or sergeant something he was a He was a local Marine who started a catering business. So we hired him and It was it was it was a great experience And I hope that our impact of on the community was Was just as good and just as fruitful and you know, I Hope so I went back there About a month ago The unborn child is like a mother of three One of the other little girls young girls has aunt daughters. She just retired from the Navy Yeah It's amazing the one of the boatmen I met again. He was down there, too so It it had a good impact I think on and their lives and that's a good thing because you don't want to come in like the the circus incident in town and and disrupt things and and and Cause problems. So I think we did a good job and they they they were like family to us Thank you I just want to say this this movie's always been fabulous to me I've been watching it for since we first came out with it But I've never found a score or soundtrack for it And I love the music the dialogue and I was wondering wondering if there was any Anything that ever came out in regards to the mystical magical music is was composed by John Barnes and We we're still working on that we tried at the time to get To get a soundtrack made from it and there were we it didn't happen. It couldn't happen But we still talk about it. So yeah, it is a wonderful score. I mean he composed unbelievable score He composed the score in 10 days 10 days in 10 days. Yeah He would go into a trance and and just write and compose and he he composed it kind of like the each each character had an aria and he composed them according to their the African deity that they represented as well as their astrological sign that we assigned to each of them, right and So it was like it was really deep. So I'm hoping it does come out at some point because I would love them to own it I'm gonna tell them Yeah, thank you excellent film. Thank you very much Hi, thanks for being here with us today I'm Amelia and my my family's from a few islands south of where you shot Which is mostly golf courses now like you guys have said and I wanted to ask two questions. How was the film received by? You said that you had family who were Galegici, how was it received by them and by other people like the finished product actually and then the second question is Your book is amazing and I'm curious about the decision to write a sequel as a book and sort of What what led to that decision and also just if you could talk a bit about your practice as a writer too? Oh the the writing of the book was Very humbling to me because I'm used to writing screenplays And then I was kind of disappointed in the end because they insisted on calling the book daughters of the dust as well when I had written the book under the title of Gichi recollections and the Publishers didn't want that they they wanted it to be daughters of the dust because even though they had not if they weren't familiar With the film they knew that the film was out and so they said well we can market it better as daughters of the dust I Wanted to do it's the second it's part two It's the continuing story of the Pesant family, and I very much wanted to to make that film So far it hasn't happened, but that doesn't mean it will not happen. Yes Hi, my name is sailor. I wanted to thank you also for being here today. I'm really excited I just graduated from a film program. I actually did my ending project on you And I'm yes, I'm really excited to be here I actually wanted to ask about how do you feel about seeing the imagery of This body of work or different images or reflections in Current bodies of work by other people even though it seemed from what I researched that Eurocentric Hollywood wasn't as receptive When this film was released, I just wanted to know your thoughts about seeing it and how it's being accepted now Do you have any particular films in mind? So even some of the cinematography Mr. Jaffa I Can see reflected in Of course you were also talking about the the moonlight and the you know the black blue looks Like newer movies that have come out also in I'm not sure maybe I'm just making this up, but I've seen in Beyonce's works of lemonade Definite visual portrayals that reflect this body of works I just wanted to know how you felt about it being reflected now and so widely accepted But back then the LA rebellion was not We love lemonade Lemonade it's it's it's all part of a continuum the same sensibilities and we We love it. We applaud it. We want to see more of it and Yeah, we're very pleased Yeah, and I could just add one thing to that You know, it's funny. It's like stuff stuff not accidental. Like you said, it's a continuum. I mean if you actually Scratch the credits on that stuff. It's always like Little bit of separation because like even on lemonade Like between I like I work with Malik site site on formation We have some stuff that we shot in lemonade Khalil Joseph's who is an associate of ours Super incredibly talented filmmaker, you know, obviously knows the whole body of work and knows not just the body of work But knows a lot of the thinking behind it, you know, so and the aesthetics of Solange. Yeah, exactly So it's not an accident, you know, I mean You know, I think people it was a hit in the beginning people responded to the look positively in the beginning and people responded to the look Possibly Thank you, my name's Audra. I was a 20 year old journalism student and you've granted us an interview Miss dash a foreign magazine a little magazine that had six issues called noir. So I want to thank you for that again it was amazing was the first published outside of my college newspaper article that I'd ever had and I asked you this question then and you wouldn't answer it. So And you know, we were we were in that first round of your showings at film forum We my journalism class and I saw your film three times together in the film forums running and we asked you then Who it's a storytelling question. We wanted to know who the who raped her Who was the villain because our question then was, you know, this was family everyone there was technically related And it seemed kind of more horrific than ever that I didn't say that. Oh, it's a plant, you know, someone from the mainland, you know, yeah, I'm white for the mainland Yeah, yeah, okay. That was just a question I always had Thank you Hello, I'm Mila. Um, I'm a film student at the new school in the grad program media studies And I've only just been introduced to you working the last two years of my life So it's been amazing for me coming from like family in the Midwest and Mississippi as well And with that the theme of family being in the center of this film. I'm really curious about How you worked with your actors and maybe non-actors Preparing for the film because there's so many scenes that are so reminiscent I think for a lot of us within the diaspora Playing with our little cousins and our siblings and and especially the girls and the boys and grandma sitting around and telling you Stories that feed into that oral family history. I'm really curious about how you prepared Your cast as well as your crew for these scenes to make them feel more authentic Well, great question. Well, the first thing I did was I prepared a background sheets histories about the region about the people about the culture and then About what I felt the the characters who they are and who they ought to be Knowing that actors always bring their own choices This was the only film I've ever made where I had rehearsal time We had about a week Rehearsal and all of the other films I ever made even, you know You know Rosa Park story or funny Valentine's or what have you there's no rehearsal anymore. So we were I Miss having rehearsals time. So we we rehearsed and on St. Helena for about a week. Yeah, and And we also played volleyball together Did you just wanted to know did you have any like Exercises that you did with the volleyball was one of the exercises. No, truly. No, that's what that's what we did too So people would Learn to relax and to trust one another and and to build intimacy We were able to play volleyball and then we we did group rehearsals and then we did One-on-one rehearsals and then sometimes just two characters together rehearsals and sometimes we reversed their roles like Alva would take Eli's dialogue Yeah, Michael and then they'd play against each other to find to discover What's in there that what kind of emotions that they could find in there? Well, thank you and I thank you for the wide range of characters I feel like I saw so many family members and aunties and cousins in the film So thank you so much for that. Thank you Peace mr. Jaffa miss Rogers and miss dash I went to Howard. I was the one we out But nonetheless, I want to know I want to thank you just as everyone else has for this film because Not only are the themes very Ellen the themes are very essential to us as Africans in America With the intergenerational exchange, but then also this continuum of African culture thriving in America and just the variations and nuances of it being in a foreign land. I'm just going on this notion of the what the person said before me This notion of like the aunties and uncles and having the mama teach like different teach different words and the translations of what it was in the gucci language to America to American English But just holding in on that notion of the intergenerational exchange and going to Howard one of my first introductions at Howard I studied Afro-American studies Africana studies and One of my first introductions was by dr. Carr and him advising for me to watch the film daughters of the dust and I saw it and it blew my mind And with that being said along with the notion of the importance of intergenerational exchange because I feel like that's something That's lack thereof right now It's not very it's not it's not very it. It's not done. It's not done I feel like it's I feel like it we're able to assess like elders or assess People the generation before us through like very myopic means if that makes sense So with that being said I put I present the question to you miss dash. Can you mentor me? Well Curiously enough I am at Howard right now I took highly garrimas class this year so he could go out and shoot this year. So I was there all 2016 and into 2017 for highly So Email me I'll know your email like what? You can find her afterwards Okay, and our last question. Thank you. I have like five questions. I Studied journalism at Howard. I promise they're very good And so you want to hear them? I'll let you pick the ones why are you? Yeah? Let her pick one there. All right So question number one is what if any literary influences you drew from in creating daughters of the dust Question number two is Can I say the literary one? Yeah, go ahead? Oh pray song for a widow Paulie Marshall? What was that again for a widow? It feels like a pop quiz. Um, the second question was that The tension between tradition and assimilation is a big theme in the in the movie It's the overarching theme and I'm wondering how you see that in your lineage today I Think that goes on With every generation because every the younger generation is always pushing to move towards growth and change and the Elders in the family always saying no stay right here Before I asked you the last yeah, just what I really want to say. Thank you for this movie I meant to say this in the beginning but Every time I watch stories of the dust first of all I cry all the way through and I'm because I'm so grateful that I Made the cut as a black woman. It's like Almost didn't but I'm there My last two questions are really quick and I wonder if you've read home going by yeah, Jesse and what you think of it and the question after that is Is there a gumbo recipe? A gumbo recipe. Oh, yes. No, I have not read homegoing and There are many gumbo recipes in fact Working on a documentary right now called travel notes of a geeky girl about vertebrae smock rovner from her book vibration cooking and We've interviewed about 22 people and everyone has their own gumbo recipe to the point where we're having gumbo wars so yes There are many gumbo recipes in but I do have my own Thank you all very much. Thank you