Daughters of the Dust

CTL-E-6173 · Work · film · 1991; National Film Registry 2004

UNVERIFIED (no verification object) evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-03670 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-1372 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6173. Master record source: CTL priority intake 2026-10-18 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 feature written and directed by Julie Dash, set in 1902 among the Peazant family, a multigenerational Gullah Geechee family on an island off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. The Walker Art Center, which programs the film at one hundred and twelve minutes, describes it as a poetic meditation on migration and inheritance: the family weighs leaving its ancestral island home for the modernizing mainland, balancing the promises of movement against the gravity of tradition and histories of violence. Dash's film is her debut feature. The Walker identifies it as the first American feature directed by an African American woman to receive a theatrical release, and UCLA-derived biographies carried by film institutions state the same milestone as the first film by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the United States. Its circular narrative structure and lush cinematography, the Walker notes, defined an aesthetic language that continues to inspire contemporary artists. The Library of Congress lists Daughters of the Dust, under release year 1991, as selected for the National Film Registry in 2004, thirteen years after its release.

The record

• Also known as: Daughters of the Dust (1991)
• Year: 1991
• Work type: film

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 5 — 747 Program, Wave 12; fifth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Daughters of the Dust entity or alias in the live graph (3,843 entities), and NO Julie Dash Person entity exists in the graph (her name appears only inside another record's citation text). ID CTL-E-6173 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 scan-tail reserve banked by Scan Tail Wave 4, corpus-gap-candidates ranked #2111. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Landmark of Black independent and women's cinema: the first widely released feature by an African American woman, centered on Gullah Geechee cultural continuity and migration. Vital status: WORK — not applicable as a life status; the film survives, is programmed in a 2K/DCP restoration by institutions including the Walker Art Center, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2004 (LOC; Walker, accessed 2026-10-16). STATISTICS — Dates and figures (accessed 2026-10-16): release year 1991 and National Film Registry induction 2004 (Library of Congress complete listing; Walker Art Center). Running time 112 minutes (Walker Art Center). Setting year 1902, as given in institutional program accounts returned in research and carried in the description's framing; the film's island setting is described by the Walker as off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia — no narrower island claim is asserted, as program sources differ on island naming. MEDIA: photo HELD (HELD — candidate: the film's theatrical poster / a Peazant family beach still as carried on the Walker Art Center program page; NO license is claimed — PHOTO-001 verification deferred. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6173-daughters-of-the-dust.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (not a place record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Work records carry no map slot; the film's Sea Islands setting is carried in the description, not as a map spe) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.)

Relationships

• Julie Dash — authored by
  Walker Art Center calls Daughters of the Dust (1991) Dash's debut feature and the first film by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the United States; CCCB independently describes it the same way. Closes the blocked edge documented in Scan Tail Wave 5.

Sources

• Walker Art Center, Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash (accessed 2026-10-16) — first American feature directed by an African American woman to receive a theatrical release; Peazant family, Gullah Geechee traditions, island off South Carolina and Georgia, weighing migration to the mainland; 1991, 112 minutes; Dash earned an MFA from UCLA in 1985; included in the National Film Registry in 2004 — https://www.walkerart.org/whats-on/daughters-of-the-dust-by-julie-dash/ (primary source · build store)
• Library of Congress, Complete National Film Registry Listing (accessed 2026-10-16) — Daughters of the Dust listed with year of release 1991 and year inducted into the National Film Registry 2004 — https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing (primary source · build store)
• African Film Festival, Inc., Dash, Julie biography (sourced to UCLA Film & Television Archive, L.A. Rebellion) (accessed 2026-10-16) — Dash's first feature Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first film by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the United States; Library of Congress named it to the National Film Registry in 2004; Dash later returned to its Gullah milieu in a 1999 novel of the same title — http://africanfilmny.org/directors/julie-dash/ (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6173 · Combined Graph record U-03670 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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