Julie Dash's landmark 'Daughters of the Dust' is reborn

NEW YORK (AP) — Julie Dash's 1991 film "Daughters of the Dust" was the first film directed by an African American woman to get a nationwide theatrical release.

Rapturously lyrical, wholly original, it's been called "a landmark achievement" and "one of the most distinctive, original independent films of its time."

Dash was partly inspired by writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Melville Jean Herskovits, whose "The Myth of a Negro Past" detailed the deep cultural roots that African-American slaves carried with them.

After attending AFI and UCLA in the '80s, she was associated with the "LA Rebellion" movement of filmmakers that helped forge a new black cinema.

"Daughters of the Dust" — made with $800,000 and largely funded by PBS's American Playhouse — was met with great reviews from some, but it was seen as too unconventional by a movie industry with narrow ideas about African American filmmaking.

[...] there certainly have been some frustrations in wondering why the doors didn't open to me to do another feature like all the other people on the stage with us at Sundance.