MIM Movie Review

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

   Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1992)

   The film is the story of a Gullah family, descendants of Africans
   who slaved on the South Carolina island's indigo plantations for two
   centuries. As capitalism consolidated the textile industries on the
   mainland, the Gullahs were basically left alone to subsist and create
   their own society. The family faces a crisis in 1902 as people begin
   to migrate to the mainland. The mother recounts the tale of the Igbos
   brought in chains to the island after the Civil War. They turned as
   a group and walked on the surface of the water, back across the sea
   to Africa. This is an idealized, liberating vision common to Black
   oral history. The truth of the tale, known to the Gullahs, is that
   the Igbos walked into the sea and drowned themselves rather than
   submit to the white man's forced labor.