Daughters of the Dust

In 1902, newlywed Eula Pazant is raped by a landowner. Months later, Eula is heavy with child. Her husband Eli believes that she is carrying the child of the rapist. Tormented by Eula’s pregnancy, Eli can not bear to talk to Eula, nor embrace her as a husband. Nana Pazant, the family matriarch and “healer” has been wrestling with the spirit world in an effort to keep her family from leaving their island; now she must turn all of her attention to the “storm” raging inside of Eula’s womb. Nana Pazant practices mysticism and magic. A believer of an ancient African religion, Nana Pazant calls upon her ancestors to insure that Eli is the father of his wife’s child.

The story unfolds over the course of a family picnic, a last supper. Along the way, the film saturates us with impressionistic colors, African symbolism, Gullah rituals, cooking, dialect and the sound of field cries expressing the complex resonances of the Gullah lifestyle.

At the picnic, Eula seeks out her cousin, Yellow Mary, who has returned home “ruin’t” after having worked as a wet-nurse and prostitute in Cuba. On the eve of her family’s departure from the island, Yellow Mary is determined to reclaim her place in the Pazant family’s history. Eula and Yellow Mary spend “stolen moments” away from the other family members recalling and recollecting thr events that have shaped their lives. After several unexpected happenings and dream-like occurrences experienced by different Pazant family members, Eli and Eula are compelled by the will of Nana Pazant to seek a fellowship with their ancestors through spiritual possession. In his Possessed state, Eli is made to see that the child Eula is carrying is his. Shimmering in the after glow of their experience, Eli and Eula return to the family picnic reunited as husband and wife.

Daughters of the Dust explores a struggle between the sacred and the secular in sensuous drama that is full of the unexpected.