40 Andrew Sarris have been any more in.docx

40 Andrew Sarris
have been any more inspired than Voltaire's. Presum-
ably, the Age of Reason would have stifled Racine's
neoclassical impulses. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Bazin's
hypothesis can hardly be argued to a verifiable conclu-
sion, but I suspect somewhat greater reciprocity
between an artist and his zeitgeist than Bazin would
allow. He mentions, more than once and in other
contexts, capitalisn1's influence on the cinema. Without
denying this influence, I still find it impossible to
attribute X directors and Y films to any particular

system or culture. Why should the Italian cinema be
superior to the German cinema after one war, when
the reverse was true after the previous one? As for
artists conforn1ing to the spirit of their age, that spirit
is often expressed in contradictions, whether between
Stravinsky and Sibelius, Fielding and Richardson,
Picasso and Matisse, Chateaubriand and Stendhal.
Even if the artist does not spring from the idealized
head of Zeus, free of the embryonic stains of history,
history itself is profoundly affected by his arrival. If
we cannot imagine Griffith's October or Eisenstein's
Birth of a Nation because we find it difficult to trans-
pose one artist's unifying conceptions of Lee and
Lincoln to the other's dialectical conceptions of Lenin
and Kerensky, we are, nevertheless, compelled to rec-
ognize other differences in the perso11alities of these
two pioneers beyond their respective cultural com-
plexes. It is with these latter differences tF1at the auteur

theory is most deeply concerned. If directors and
other artists cannot be wrenched from their historical
environments, aesthetics is reduced to a subordinate
branch of ethnography.
I have not done full justice to the subtlety of
Bazin's reasoning and to the civilized skepticisn1 with
which he propounds his own argun1ents as slight
probabilities rather than absolute certainties. Conten1-
porary opponents of the auteur theory n1.ay feel that
Bazin himself is suspect as a member of the Cahiers
family. After all, Bazin does express qualified approval
of the auteur theory as a relatively objective method
of evaluating films apart from the subjective perils of
impressionistic and ideological criticism. Better to
analyze the director's personality than the critic's nerve
centers or politics. Nevertheless, Bazin makes his stand
clear by concluding: "This is not to deny the role of
the author, but to restore to him the preposition

without which the noun is only a limp concept.
'Author,' undoubtedly, but of what?"
Bazin's syntactical flourish raises an interesting
problem in English usage. The French preposition "de"
serves many functions, but among others, those of
possession and authorship. In English, the preposition
"by" once created a scandal in the American film
industry when Otto Preminger had the temerity to
advertise The Man With the Golden Arm as a film "by
Otto Preminger." Novelist Nelson Algren and The
Screenwriters' Guild raised such an outcry that
the offending preposition was deleted. Even the noun
"author" (which I cunningly mask as "auteur") has a
literary connotation in English. In general conversa-
tion, an "author" is invariably taken to be a writer.
Since "by" is a preposition of authorship and not of
ownership like the ambiguous "de," the fact that
Preminger both produced and directed The Man with

the Golden Arm did not entitle him in America to
the preposition "by." No one would have objected
to the possessive form: "Otto Preminger's The Man
with the Golden Arm." But, even in this case, a novelist
of sufficient reputation is usually honored with the
possessive designation. Now, this is hardly the case in
France, where The Red and the Black is advertised as
"un film de Claude Au tant-Lara." In America, "directed
by" is all the director can claim, when he is not also
a well-known producer like Alfred Hitchcock or Cecil
B. de Mille.
Since most American film critics are oriented
toward literature or journalism, rather than toward
future film-making, most American film criticism is
directed toward the script instead of toward the screen.
The writer-hero in Sunset Boulevard complains that
people don't realize that someone "writes a picture;
they think the actors make it up as they go along." It

would never occur to this writer or most of his col-
leagues that people are even less aware of the director's
function.
Of course, the much-abused man in the street has
a good excuse not to be aware of the auteur theory
even as a figure of speech. Even on the so-called
classic level, he is not encouraged to ask "Aimez-vous
Griffith?" or "Aimez-vous Eisenstein?" Instead, it is
which Griffith or which Eisenstein? As for less
acclaimed directors, he is lucky to find their names in
the fourth paragraph of the typical review. I doubt
that most American film critics really believe that an
indifferently directed film is comparable to an indif-
ferently written book. However, there is little point in

Erin Sullivan
Profiling: Daniel Fiddler
Daniel Fiddler is personified by his love for music, his
ambitions as an artist and his cultural heritage. When asked
what his mantra was he replied, “Oy vey.” AVOID “WHEN
ASKED” CONSTRUCTION
Fiddler is Jewish. His grandfather on his father’s side was a hat
maker in Russia. He was assigned to make a hat for the czar of
Russia. When he attempted to put the hat on the head of the
czar, the czar spit on him and exclaimed, “I will never be
touched by the hands of a Jew.” His grandfather then
immigrated to America to avoid persecution.
Fiddler’s mother wasn’t raised in Judaism. She was first
introduced to it when she went to college. Oddly enough, her
first interaction was with the movie, “Fiddler on the roof.”
Irony? Probably not.
Fiddler is 25 years old and has had quite the journey. He is
the youngest of four children. He is majoring in English, with a
minor in communications, and is expecting to graduate in
December. He has been making gelato for the past five years.
Not just any kind of gelato either, it is Argentinian gelato.
Fiddler got involved with it when he took a job out of high
school at an Italian coffee shop, where they made gelato. He
took a job this past summer making gelato for an Argentinian
gelato company.
Fiddler’s father and older siblings were athletic and sports
oriented, which pushed him into the arts. In high school he was
involved in the theater and he was on the gymnastics team. He
was the pommel horse guy. Fiddler remarks, “We were like the
artists and the musicians and we smoked pot, had long hair and
beards and stuff. A totally different breed from the other
gymnasts.”
In high school he also started his band, Dr. Kevorkian and

the Volunteers. Fiddler played the guitar and his dad rocked out
with him playing the keyboard. Every year at his high school,
Niles North, there would be a charity rock show event.
He had always wanted to play in the show so he finally got his
act together junior year and they rocked the house. The band
was together for seven years and though they’ve had a lot of
success, he feels that their very first concert that night at the
charity show was the best one. “It was just, yeah, we just rocked
so hard, especially since it was high school,” he said. “And all
the girls you liked were there to see you.” He also thought they
performed well at their senior year concert “We were rocking,
on top of the world, it was the dopest.”
Music has always been a huge part of Fiddler’s life. His
favorite thing to do is play live music, “The thrill from it is
untouchable, when people are dancing to something you are
playing, when people knew the words to your songs.” He loved
playing at house parties or small dive bars where there it’s a
more intimate setting. His favorite show besides the one in high
school was a house party at Illinois State. The floors were
shaking and there were people wall to wall. He described the
energy as explosive.
Dr. Kevorkian and the Volunteers was not the only band
that Fiddler started. When he was 21 years old he started a band
called Kiddy Korral. This was no ordinary band. It was a
musical circus themed jug band. Since he loved jazz and folk
music and also loved the circus, he wanted to put something
together that complimented that. The members of the band all
had wacky names. For example, Fiddler was “Fiddles the Hobo
clown.” There was also: “Brewster the bearded baby”, “Aye Aye
Aye the 3 eyed Mexican gun slinger”, “Lady Coco the bearded
lady”, and “Stain the hideous cowboy (half cow, half boy, all
man).”
“The music wasn’t very good,” Fiddler said. “But we had
the best time being clowns and getting hammered drunk playing
old timey music. We’d pass the jug around full of whiskey.”
One of his favorite memories with this band is when they were

playing at a house party in Rogers Park. The police came due to
a noise complaint. When the Police officer peeked his head in to
see what was going on he looked so confused when he saw the
crazy clown costumes that he just mumbled, “Uhm, uh, try to
keep it down.”
Fiddler ran an open mic night at a café in Evanston for five
years. He feels that doing this is what really gave him total
confidence to be on stage. Though he’s had quite a bit of
experience with his bands, this taught him how to really talk to
audience and how to relate to them. He used to host a trivia
contest at a downtown Chicago restaurant. Fiddler also hosted
the NEIU talent show last year and plans on doing so again this
year. He feels that hosting is the best way to get the audience on
your side. Instead of performing an act, and only having five
minutes to get the audience to like him, he has the whole night
to do so. He can tell jokes, play a few songs, and dance if he’s
really that desperate.
When Fiddler wasn’t rocking out on stage, his head would be in
a comic book. Batman has been a part of Fiddler’s life for as
long as he can remember. It’s his silhouette that’s so attractive,
the car and the costume. He didn’t know this growing up, but
Batman had the best writers in the business at the time. He
thinks that the argument about who is the better superhero
always comes down to Superman vs. Batman. However, “Good
writing is what wins against a superhero that has all the power.”
Fiddler felt that Batman was always doing the right thing even
when it was hardest thing to do. “He’s the best person that a
person can be.”
Leslie Hurtado
1) My goal this year is to become a news reporter for an English
news television station. I am interning at WGN Chicago to learn
more about honing my writing skills and editing skills to
achieve that goal.

2) I don't like following what everyone is doing because you
lose a sense of yourself when you imitate others. That is not
happiness. I am myself when I am surrounded by people that
accept me for unapologetic character.
3) My passion is to report on issues that impact marginalized
communities in Chicago in the future.
4) Family and loyal friends are important to me.
5) I hate pretentious people who do not give back to those less
fortunate.
6) My pet peeve is people who don't look deeper into issues
around them.
7) A bad habit would be not being able to concentrate when
hearing instructions.
8) My biggest accomplishment was telling my family and
friends that I was selected to be an intern for Telemundo
Chicago.
9) My biggest investment would be nothing. I`m still investing
for a brighter future.
10) I do plan on having a baby with my husband one day.
11) I have worked at many childcare centers and have interned
at four media companies. I have five or more years of
experience
12) I hang out at the thrift with my mom, and watch conspiracy
theories with my husband at home.

13) When I started community college, I dreamed of working in
the media industry, and now I am working in the media
industry.
14) My favorite memory is every time spent with my mom, my
sister, my dad, and my husband.
15) I traveled to New York recently this past year for a
journalism conference
Classmate Profile: 2-4 pages, typed double spaced, posted as
.doc in Assignments folder by Thursday, Jan. 30.
1. Does the profile avoid first-person references?
2. Does the story gush about the subject? Does it
contain adjectives?
3. Does the story have interesting anecdotes?
4. Does the story raise questions that it doesn't
answer?
5. Does the lead draw you in?
6. Is the ending strong?
7. Does the story follow AP style?
8. Can you find any grammatical errors?
9. Does the story slip into list mode? How could it go
deeper?
10. What could improve the profile?
1
A Certain Tendency of
the French Cinema
Francois Truffaut

,
Francois Truffaut began his career as a film critic writing for
Cahiers du Cinema beginning in
1953. He went on to become one of the most celebrated and
popular directors of the French
New Wave, beginning with his first feature film, Les Quatre
cents coup (The Four Hundred
Blows, 1959). Other notable films written and directed by
Truffaut include Jules et Jim (1962),
The Story of Adele H. (1975), and L'Argent de Poche (Small
Change; 1976). He also acted
in some of his own films, including L'Enfant Sauvage (The Wild
Child, 1970) and La Nuit
Americain (Day for Night, 1973). He appeared as the scientist
Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Truffaut's
controversial essay, originally published
in Cahiers du Cinema in January 1954, helped launch the
development of the magazine's
auteurist practice by rejecting the literary films of the
"Tradition of Quality" in favor of a cinema
des auteurs in which filmmakers like Jean Renoir and Jean
Cocteau express a more personal
vision. Truffaut claims to see no "peaceful co-existence between

this 'Tradition of Quality' and
an 'auteur's cinema."' Although its tone is provocative, perhaps
even sarcastic, the article
served as a touchstone for Cahiers, giving the magazine's
various writers a collective identity
as championing certain filmmakers and dismissing others.
These notes have no other object than to attempt to
define a certain tendency of the French cinema - a
tendency called "psychological realism" - and to
sketch its limits.
Ten or Twelve Films
If the French cinema exists by means of about a
hundred films a year, it is well understood that only
ten or twelve merit the attention of critics and cine-
philes, the attention, therefore of Cahiers.
These ten or twelve films constitute what has been
prettily named the "Tradition of Quality"; they force, by
their ambitiousness, the admiration of the foreign press,
defend the French flag twice a year at Cannes and at

Venice where, since 1946, they regularly carry off
medals, golden lions and grands prix.
With the advent of"talkies," the French cinema was
a frank plagiarism of the American cinema. Under the
influence of Sca,face, we ni.ade the amusing Pepe Le
Mako. Then the French scenario is most clearly obliged
to Prevert for its evolution: Quai Des Brumes (Port Of
Shadows) remains the masterpiece of poetic realism.
Frarn;ois Truffaut, "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,"
from Cahiers d11 Ci11C111a in English l. Originally published
in French in Ca/tiers d11 Ci11C111a 31
195-1). © 1954. Reprinted by penn.ission of Cahiers d11
Ci11e111a.

Figure 1. Julie Dash and Charles Burnett at the Pan African
Film Festival. 2008 (Photo by Frances-
Anne Solomon, 2008).
"I Do Exist": From "Black Insurgent"
to Negotiating the Hollywood Divide-
A Conversation with Julie Dash
¿ by MICHAEL T. MARTIN
CO ' '
^ Abstract: This extended conversation with Julie Dash
concerns her work as a filmmaker
£ and projects in development since the release of her
masterwork, Daughters of the Dust
i (1992). It examines Dash's film practice and ambivalent
relationship to Hollywood, along
^ with her take on black independent filmmaking from the
1950s to the present and its
I prospects during Spike Lee's ascendancy.
Miehiul T Marün is director of the Black Ftbn CenUr/ArcMif
imdproßssor of Afücrn Amencan anä.Afhcan Diaspara

Stmäis ai Indiana Unu'frsity, Bloomingím. His edited and cotét^
anlholegies imlutü Redress for Historical Injus-
tices in the United States: Slavcrj-Jini Crow, and Their Legacies
(DuJu I'nivmitr B^s, 2007). Cinemas of
tbe Black Diaspora: Diversity; Dependence, and
OppositioniiLry (Wayne Sidle IJmvmit« Press, 1995), and
New I^tin Ameriran C^inenia (IVímn Stair Universily Presi
1997). Ht also directed and u>prodiM¿ Ute awará-
umningfiíüim doaonmUny m .Vteatagua, In ihe . ^ s e n c c of
Peace (1989). His most recent u.wk is on the films of
G^ fíjtUtconio and Hailt Gerima.
www.cm5tudies.org 49 No. 2 Winter 2010 1
Cinema Journal49 ; No. 2 I Winter 2010
[Julie Dash] consistently intervenes in and redirects Hollywood
images of African Ameri-
can women, offering aesthetically complex and compelling
chajacters and returning to spe-
cific historical moments to recover and revalue the nuances of
black ivomen's lives and
professional contributions. Joanna Hearne, 2007'
A
raconteur of extraordinary' discernment and vision, Julie Dash
was born and
reared in the Queensbridge Projects of Long Island City. New

York, alihtiugh
lier parents came from South Carolina, where on her father's
side of the family
the Gullah culture wa.s practiced. In 1968, durinji her senior
year in high school,
she attended a film workshop ai the Studio Museum in Harlem,
which amused her
interest in filnmiaking. in 1974. she earned a BA in film
production at the City College
of New York., then moved to Los Angeles to find work and
learn to writt? screenplays.
There she met and worked with Charles Burneti. Billy
WfW)dbenT, ajid Haue Gerima.
In 1975, she became a producing and writing fellow at the
American Film Institute,
and in 1986, she completed an NÍFA in motion picture and
television production at the
University ol California-Los Angeles fUCL,').
It was during the UCLA period that Dash's filmmaking and
political concerns co-
alesced to contest Hollywood's conventions of storytelling, a.s
well as its complicit}'
in American racism. Dash became p a n oí' a "study'" group of"
black student film-
makers at UCLA, dubbed the "black insurgents" by Toni Cade
Bambara (a.k.a. the
"Los Angeles School" or "LA Rebellion"). The group. a.ssert.s
Bambara. "engaged in
interrogafing conventions of dominant cinema, screening films
of socially conscious
cinema, and discussing ways to alter previous significations as
they relate to Black
people."^

T h e intellectual and cultural commitments of the first wave of
thi.s group were
"inseparable from the political and social struggles and
convulsions of the 1960s,"
contends Ntongela Masilela.^ In contrast to Hollywood,
members of the group en-
gaged and were inspired by the writings of Third World
theorisis, the cultural texts
and practices of the Black Arts Movement, and the anticolonial
and postrevolutionary
films and political tracts of the New Latin American Cinema
movement. Tiie group's
project was to conceive and practice a film form appropriate to
and in correspondence
with the historical moment and their cukural and aesthetic
concerns. For Masilela, a
central preoccupation and organizing theme of the first cohort
of what arguably con-
stituted a movement—comprising Charles Burnett, Haue
Gerima, and Larry Clark
among others—was the "relationship of history^ to the structure
of the family."^ This
1 Joanna Hearne. "Julie Dasii," in Schirmet Encyclopedis of
Film. su. Barry Keith Grant (Detroit, Ml: Schirmer Référ-
ence, 2007), 376.
2 Toni Cade Sambara, "Reading the Signs, Empowering the
Eye: Daughters of the Dustanü the Black Cinematic Mowe-
nient." in Black Cinema, ed. Uanthia Diawara (New York;
RouUedge. 1993!, 119. According to Ntongela Masilela.
Dash was among the "second wave" m this movement, which
included Alrle Sharon Larkin. Bemard Nichols, and

Billy WOodberry. See Ntongela Masilela, "Tbe Los Angeles
School of Black Filmmakers." m ibid.. 107.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 1 1 1 . Note that Charles Burnett's films, Killer of Sheep
11977). My Brothers Wedding il'SSS). 77» Worse
(1973), Serera/Frtencfe (1969). and m i e / i / f f f a / / i 5 ( 1 9
9 5 ) , were released in a box set by Milestone Filnfis (20071.
Cinema Journal 49 No. 2 Winter 2010
theme is perhaps best epitomized by Burnett's neoreaüst take on
urban ghetto black
working-class life in Killer of Sheep (1977) and, I would argue,
b>' Michael Roemer's
NolMng but a Mart (1964), a seminal study of black family life
and race relations in the
rural South in the late 1950s to mid-1960s. Dash, a member of
tiie gniup's second
wave, along with Billy Woodberry [Bless Thár UttU Hearts,
1984), would address this
famiha] theme, as well as the southern rural black encounter
with modernity, in her
most original, experimental, and complex film, Daughters of
iJie Dust (1992).
Dash's eariy films reveal the originality of her artistry and the
themes that would
inform her more mature work. For Diary of an Afriiati Nun
fl977), adapted fnim a
short story by Alice Walker and shot on Super iJmm, Dash

received a Director's Guild
of America Award. In 1982, she made Illusions, the stor>- of
two African American
women—one passing for white—in the Hollywood film industry'
during World War 11,
for wliich she later received a Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame
Award. With her criti-
cally acclaimed grand opus, Daughters of the Dust—selected by
the Library of Congress
for the National Film Registry in 2004, and the first feature film
by an African Ameri-
can woman to have a national theatrical release—Dash is
assured membership in the
pantheon of African American filmmakers.
Despite the critical success of Daughters of the Dust, Dash
continues lo experience
resistance in Hollywood to financing her projects. In ihe mid-
1990s, she migrated
to television, directing projects for CBS [The Rosa Parks Story,
starring Angela Bassett,
2002), M T V [Uve Song, 2001), BET Mmies/Encore/Starz3
[Fumiv Wlmänes, 1998),
and HBO [Subway Stories, 1996). She also produced shorts
about health issues and mu-
sic videos, including Tracy Chapman's Give Me One Reason,
which was nominated tor
an M T V Music Video Award in 1996. In 2004. she completed
Brothers of the Borderland,
a short film scheduled to run tor tour years at the National
Underground Railroad
Freedom Center Mtjscum in Ohio.
This extended interview with Dash occurred on two occasions:
during her visit
to the Indianapolis Museum of An on October 29, 2006, where

Daughters of the
Dust was screened as part of the musetmi's "Film with Ardst
Talk Program," and at
Indiana Llniversity-Bloomingion on October 3^4, 2007, when
Dash gave the kcy-
nole address, "My Narrative; Experiences of a Filmmaker," and
screened her film
The Rosa Parks Story as part of a month-long celebration of the
university's archives
and special collections. The interview is organized in two parts.
T h e first concerns
Dash's work since Daughter of the Dust, including her current
projects in develop-
ment; the second, her film practice, the prohibitions of
Hollywood and attitudes
of executives that constrain black filmmakers' creative impulse
and "magic," and
her views about Spike Lee and black independent filmmaking
from the 1960s to
the present.
On the Margins of Hollywood
M M : Reiiewing your Web site, I touk note thai you've worked
on productions for CBS. MTV,
BET Movie^/Encore/StarzS, and HBO. Together, tliey
substantiate your increasing presence and
prominence in Hollywood. Apart fiom exceptional artistry and
professionalism, how do you account
for your success?

J D : I sec myself working in and outside of" Hollywood.
Hollywood is still not quile
open to what 1 have to offer. Angela Bassett was one of the
executive producers of Tke
Rosa Parks Story. She said, "I want Julie Dash to direct this
film and to do some rewrit-
ing of the script." So it happened. The same thing occurred with
Funny Valentines. 1 di-
rected il because Alfre Woodard was one of the executive
producers. She said, "I want
Julie Dash on this." It's people like Bassett and Woodai-d who
have helped me because
Hollywood is still slow about hiring me to direct and write.
They're curious, however,
and like lo keep up with me. I can have lunch with anyone and
visit with executives,
but they have not hired me. Some were put off by Daughters of
ifie Dust because they did
not understand it, although people in the .irican American
community seem to have
an affinity for it. In fact, they [executives] rarely want to talk
about Daughters. Once I
was at Universal Studios preparing to do Funny Valentines and
a producer said, 'Just
don'i do Daughters of the Dust." He actually said thai. Another
Hollywood executi'C
said, "I've seen your movie—Daughters of the DILÜ. Let's not
even talk about it, let's move
on from here." You know, it's like having a skeleton in your
closet, it's like we won't lalk
about thai. It's interesting, and 1 would like someone to tell me
what it means.
M M : Given the demands of executives and tiieformtdmc

conventions of HoltywoodJare, haneym
Imd to compromise your vision and artislry?
J D : I love making movies. I'm a filmmaker. I've been a
filmmaker for a very long time.
I know how to come at it from different angles. I will always
maintain the integrity of
the subject matter whatever I'm doing. I could do a music video,
a very intellectual or
highbrow porno film if I chose to. In production, I fight very
hard to keep historical
events and issues accurate. It's important to me because I don't
really enjoy films that
aren't multi-layered, that don't resonate, or are inaccurate. Of
course, you can take
dramatic license and stretch things to make them more
interesting. AH filmmakers do
that. But I will not manipulate certain things that have to do
with my culture to please
someone else. lVe been asked to do that and I have refused.
Perhaps I'm seen as dif-
ficult. 1 see it as being true to myself.
What's needed is financing from outside sources. From venture
capitalists and
private funds. j& a people, we must finance the films we want
to see. These kinds
of changes have already begun with Tyler Perry, from people in
the music industry,
and with actors like Vll! Smith producing the successful film
77ie Pursuit of Happyness
(Gabriele Muccino, 2006), and now with Danny Glover—
cofounder of Louverture
Films-—who is producing and directing the film Toussaint
(2009).

New and Unrealized Scripts
M M : Lei's talk about your projects in development. Digital
Diva was ori^nally intendedjbr CD-
ROM. I'Vkat's it about and when do you expect to complete it?
J D : I've worked so long on Digital Diva thai it would now
have to be a DVD. I went
from a screenplay lo graphic novel and to pile hing the
screenplay lo every major stu-
dio, mini-studio, independent, black-owned, what-havT-you.
They declined it.
Digital Diva is about a yoting black woman who is a third-
generation computer en-
cryption specialist. She's the digital diva. Her grandfather was a
mathematical genius
Cinema Journal 49 I No. 2 Winter 2010
who worked for tlie Allies during World War II. And her father,
a Carnegie Mellon
Fellow, was a Black Panther.
I heard that during World War IJ they had Nigerians working in
tlie Black Tower,
which was a secret code-breaking site in Washington., DC. Why
would they have
Nigerians? Perhaps because the Igbo language is very difficult?
I researched and
found out that, while they acknowledged having employed chess

masters, gypsies, and
gamblers to break the codes, they omitted the Nigerians [from
the official record].
So, I mixed this all together in the narrative. I put some
Nigerians at Oxford—one
of whom is ihe grandfather in thr siory—and had Lhem go
through the .Man Turing
thing at Bletchley Park and then with the yMlies in Washington,
DC. Twenty years
later, his son, a Black Panther allied with SDS [Students for a
Democratic Society]
and the Weathermen, is killed because he has become a very
dangerous person. His
daughter, the digital diva, is opposed to black militancy because
she lost the father
she never knew.
MM: There are aspects of Digital Diva thai resonate uiih The
Spook Who Sat by the Dtwr
(Ivan Dvcon, 1973), w/ach was adapted tofilmßom the novel by
Sam Greenlee.
J D : Absolutely. .nd the novel The Man PfTt« Cñed I Am
(1967) by John A. Williams. I
read it in high school and thought it was really good. Why
hasn't the novel been made
into a film? Time is running out to make Distal Diva because I
have to tell the story
within these time locks. 1 have not been able to get it financed.
In 1994, J was asked, "Don't you Uiink it's a little confusing^'"
It's been picked up
several times as an option by several .sources who always want
to make it something
other than what it is. You biow, there was one black company
that said, "Why don't

you make it an AIDS iilm?" Then there was another that said,
"Well why don't yoti
make it a white film?"
M M : It's not about that
J D : Right! We already have that. What's new? It's not just
Julie Dash who has trouble
getting films iinanced. It's also Charles Burnett and Neema
Barnette and many, many
otliers—including white filmmakers with a ditVerent voice.
Everyone who works in
the industry is working on this narrow channel. The Rosa Parks
Story was made after
fifty years had passed, and then they didn't want to tell it
correcdy. They said. "Add
this lo make her more likeable, do this, change that." No, while
black filmmakers
have progressed, we have a long way lo go. Films are being
made but they tend to be
comedies.
M M : Negroes in Hollywood?
]D: Negroes in Hollywood. They now watit buddy films. Ï don't
know how to say it
nicely; it's not about us. It's a ver̂ difficult situation, bul it
appears not to be so because
now we're seeing more black romande comedies, which is
wonderful. They're very re-
laxing, but who's deciding on which films will be made and
which will nol? Wliat kinds
of films are being made and why? Who is the audience? Are we
still just performing
for white audiences? Are we being funny, are we dancing, are
we singing, or are we

now the love interest?
Cinema Journal 49 [ No. 2 | Winter 2010
MM: At what stage of development M The Colored Conjurers.^
J D : Same situation.
M M : / / .sounds like a story thai revisits the theme of passing
inyour earlier film Illusions, which I
recall is a semiautobiographicai work based onyour aunt
Delphine?
J D : The Colored Conjurers is a period piece. FOT years, I've
been told that period pieces
don't sell, especially period pieces about African Americans.
Recently; there's been
nothing but period pieces irom Hollywood. Jt's like approaching
die Wiz in The lVÍ4:ard
o/" O^ (Victor Fleming, 1939). T h e wizard: "Oh, today we're
not doing this, today we're
doinf̂ the other. Today the color is green, tomorrow blue'" T h e
rules change by the
day and sonietime.s by tbe hour. The same companies have told
me that they cannot
do a period film and, before I hit the door, there's a period film
being made. These
companies claim the demographics show that they cannot
afTord to do films with a
female lead. They can't do films about magicians because they
can't sell them, then
The Illusionist (Neil Burger, 2006) is released. T h e problem i.-
i tliat African American

films are only allowed to be "this" or "that," depending upon
when they need "this" or
"that." There's not much variety. Wiiat'.s un my mind is not
what's being produced or
financed at the moment. And that's been going on for fifteen
years now.
M M : E n e m y of the S u n , another work in development,
exemplifies the range of your interests
and appears to have more general appeal and commercial
ambitions than T h e C o l o r e d C o n j u r -
ers. This is suggested in the description on jour Heb site: 'A
sophisticated and sexy siLipense thñlier
reminiscent of Entrapment (1999), Body Heat (I98IJ, and T h e
Thomas Crown Affair
(1968, 1999). "
J D : ^ very well-known producer flew me to New York to talk
about doing Enemy of the
Sun. His development person, who also had TTie Colored
Conjurers screenplay and Digital
Diva script, said she didn't know any African Americans like
that. I replied, "Well,
where arc you from?" She said from the Midwest and that was
not her experience with
African Americans. I said, "You could go to Atlanta or DC, we
come in all colors, all
shades, and we do many different things." I hate to say this but
"they"—the people
in development—^have a very myopic view of who we are and
what we are and what
wf want to do. If we don't fall into place exacdy where and how
tbey imagine us, as

in Daughters of Ihe Dust, it's like "What do you mean Gullah, I
never heard of Gullab!"
I've had people ask me why I didn't do a documentar) about the
Gullah before doing
Daughters. Why do I have to do a documentary first? Some
people insisted that Daughters
is a documentary. It's strange. Or they'll say things like, "Was
there a script?" No, we
just met e'ery morning at sunrise, and ever>'one knew exactly
what to wear and what
we were goijig to be performing that day. [I..^ughs] It's
unbelievable. Tbey think it
all fell together, but if it all falls together and works but is
something they don't know
about, then they want you to "put that away and let me focus on
what I know about
you." It's very patronizing, but ver' interesting. If I were to do
a remake of another
film, maybe they'd be more interested? You know, just take a
white movie and remake
it with black characters.
MM: What's Enemy of the Sun about?
Cinema Journal 49 I No. 2 , Winter 2010
J D : It's about two con artists who travel around the US getting
very wealthy women
to give ihem their money And when they hit Atlanta, one of
them decides that they
could continue iheir scams legally by becoming entrepreneurs
and working within ihe
system. T h e other argues, "We've got to stay on tlie run." So,
the story addresses the

pull and tension between them.
L M : The other project in development, T h e R e a d e r . . .
J D : That's a remake of La Lectrice ( 1988) by Miehel Deville
and based on the Raymond
Jean novel of the same title.
M M : T l i e R e a d e r .fiam,i' more grounded in black life and
Ihe challenges and compromises of
an artist. The protagonist, Denise LaMarge, has Uierary
interests, along with extraordinary musical
compéleme. She's jugging the evetydtry as well as tfie personal,
while stripling to make career ded-
sions thai workfor fier. BetzLven these demands and roles is a
complex identity. Tlie close of tfießbn
(Act 3) visualizes a montage of and homage to cultural
hyhridit)í What ú it you want to convey in
Ad 3?
J D : That you can be a commercial success and maintain the
integrity of your art
or, in her case, performance skill, because she is a singer. It's
also delving into magi-
cal realism because we never hear LaMarge sing, when shf does,
because her voice
is angelic. It's a remake of the French film but with a lot of my
own issues because
she has a boyfriend who is a filmmaker and who can't get his
films made. He loves
to watch Russian movies, but all he can do to eam money is

make music videos with
dancing gíris. And then you have the foreign business people
telling LaMarge and her
group that they're not really singing like African Americans,
that they need to sing like
African Americans.
M M : Aßican Americans?
J D : I experienced this direcdy. It was a foreign distributor who
said Daughters of the Dust
wasn't an authentic African American film. It wasn't, like, from
the hood, which is in-
teresting to me, having grown up in the huod. Ironiciilly, those
filmm;ikers who make
ihe "hood" films haven't necessarily grown up in the hood. It's
exotica to them. I hope
to be around when history takes a look back at all of this. I
think it's time for some
black social scientist to step in and ask some pertinent
quesdons.
M M : Given these four distinct projects in development, uào is
your aiuHence?
J D ; Anyone looking to see a great story! Everyone looking to
experience the talent of
and new worlds by Airican American actors.
M M : Has your audience changed asyou 've worked
increasingly in Hollywood?
J D : I think my audience has increased.
M M : But not changed?

J D : With all of the new films being written and directed by
African .American film-
makers, including dynamic documentaries like Rize (David
LaChapelle, 2005), otir
audiences are growing, and the demographics are changing.
Cinema Journal 49 No. 2 I Wrtitef2010
Practice and Thematic Concerns
M M : I umdd Hke to focus now on your practice as a
filmmaker. Which do you prefer, narrctíivefiction
or documentary?
J D : I prefer narratives to documentaries because of my mother.
She'd come home
from work and I'd say, "Would you come downtown? There's
going to be a film show-
ing that wo made." She'd reply, "Is it a documentary?" And I'd
say, '"Yeah." "Oh,
fll see it later," she'd reply. So.. I never forgot that. She was
tired and wanted to see a
movie. [Laughs]
M M : So the choice of fiction over documentaiy was to please
your mother?
J D : Yes. You never tbrgct something like that: "I'll see il later.
Bring your (ape home."
Il was jusi like "Til see it later becau.se I'm not getting up out
of this bed to go down
the street to see a documentary" She wanted to see a story. She
wanted a beginning,

a middle, and an end.
M M : What's your method of ruirratíve filmmcüáng?
J D : I try ditierent things. Each film has its own history and
personality: T h e narrative
depends on the stor): The stor)' tells me how I'm g<}ing to lell
it, what it's going to be.
When 1 wrote Digital Dina I didn't set out lo do a suspense
tliriller, but it became one.
When yuu're writing you hone the script and then tweak it to
fall within the genre be-
cause you know there are certain points—post points—that you
want to hit once you
find out it's a suspense thriller. Maybe I shouldn't be saying
this. Maybe I should say, "I
set out to writf . . . " No, for Digital Diva. 1 ¡ust wanted to
write a slor)' about ctxies and
ciphers, evoking W. E. B. DuBols's "double consciousness" and
black people speaking
and moving in coded ways. Transfer that, the same aesthetic and
sensibility, to math-
ematics, and you have something really marvelous going on.
M M : Do your films refiect a partindar aesthetic style or
sensibility that distinguishes them from other
black filmmakers, particularly other black uwnen filmmakers?
J D : I think so. I think that it's closer to Euzhan Palcy's work
than anyone else's.
MM: Palcy 's early and most original work—Sugar Cane Alley
(Rue cases nègres, 1983)?
J D : Yeah, that one. When you're directing, it's all about

choices—a thousand choices.
Every day you have what cürectors call the "fottr hundred
questions" posed to you by
different departments that you have to answer. You also hiwe lo
pian ahead how you're
going to address those questions when they come up. Otherwise,
you just go "hmmm"
and easily acquiesce to a Eurocentric point of view. You have
what we call the "locus
of creativity'" people artnmd. questioning you: "Why did you
pul the ramera here?" or
"Well, the camera's silting right over there, so why don't you
move it over there?" And
you sa)', "No, I'm not going to move the camera over there."
[Laughs]
The thing lo do is be prepared for it. I always return to the
black aesthetic. That's
how 1 sort out and resolve my pn>bleins—from a black
aesthetic and from a woman's
aesthetic point of view.
Cinema Journal 49 i No. 2 Winter 2010
M M : ïbu're not makiitg decisions by committee.
J D : Exactly, although it can easily become thai. A lot of
directors work with the actors
and not the technicians. My fault is tbat I work more with the
technicians than the ac-
tors, although I give the actors hisror>' sheets, summations of
their character, etc. But
there is so much to be done with the technicians, especially if
you haven't made the de-

cisions in preproduction, for example, of what color the cup is
going to be. Otherwise,
it becomes everyone else's decision—a niishma.sh of whatever
that could be wrong or
inappropriate. The director has lo make these decisions.
M M : Among the unten who discuss your work, .several
register butßui remark upon the people who
have influenced your mode qf stotytetlmg I'm going to invoke
their names and askyou—in a sentence
or two—to explain why or how they influenced you. First,
Randy Abbott (a.kcu Omar Mubarak}?
J D : My first film teacher. Through him my first questions
about filmmaking were
uttered.
M M : Larr^> Clark?
J D : There are two Larry Glarks. There's the white filmmaker
Larry Glark and the
black one from U G I A .
MM: Vie latter.
J D : Among the reasons I went to UGLA was to work with
Larry Clarit, Haile Gerima,
and Gharics Burnett. I did my firsl film test witli Larr' Glark in
the se:'enties.
M M : Haik Gerima?
J D : 1 met him at the JK Film School. I never worked on any
of his films, but I went to

a lot of his screenings during the early UGLA days.
M M : Alara Kurosawa?
J D : That's when I realized that you make films fixim within
you.
M M : Vittorio De Sica and the Italian neorealists?
J D : Their films reminded me of H a r k m .
M M : Charles Burnett?
J D : He reminds me of the neorealists.
M M : St Clmr Bourne, whomyau liave acknowledged became a
model"for you?
J D : I worked for him through work study when 1 was at
Ghamba Productions in New
York. It was the first summer of my first year in college. I
became his slave. He only
once took me out on the sel. I had to stay in the office and go to
the store. [Laughs]
M M : Paid your dues.
J D : Yes, I did. But I aJso was able to meet the Ghamba
brothers: Gharles Hopson, Stan
Wakeman, and Stan Lathan, whom Kathleen GoIHns was editing
ihr. And, earlier at
Cinema Journal49 , No. 2 Winter 2010

the Studio Museum of Harlem, I met African American female
filmmakers who had
come before me. I saw Madeline /nderson's documentaries and
Jessie Maple's first
feature film {WiU, 1981).^ They were unable to distribute them
broadly
M M : Wasn't Stan Latíian with Black J o u r n a l at the time?
JD: Yes. and he was one of the "Chamba brothers." They were
working directors.
M M : Making documentams?
J D : Yes.
M M : Has Kathleen Collins mßuencedyam filmmaking?
J D : Kathleen Collins had her editing suite and was editing
something for St. Clair
Bourne. She would let me come in and watch her edil. She was
so eificienl and with a
baby in one hand. We became friends and she taught me about
editing.
M M : Wliat about the blmk women uniten that influenced you?
You said, fifken years ago in an
intemiew unih Houston Baker, that Toni Cade Bamhara
irifluencedyour approach to narratii^e.^ Has
'Toni Morrison influenced your approach ta storytelling?
J D : Her writing, whether in Song of Sohmati (1977), Tar Baby
(1981), TJie Bluest Eye
(1970), or even .ßiÄ?iW( 1987), is so visual that I would talk

back to the pages and visual-
ize the movie. You sit there crving, pat j-otir eyes with the
towel, and pick up the book
again. I mean, it's very interactive when reading Toni Morrison
because you're en-
gaged/ I sometimes reread her novels, especially the Song of
Solomon, through the audio
book. Someone said to me. "Oh. that could neer be made into a
film because it's so
complex." So I listened to her voice as she read it and was able
to visualize the story:
M M : ¡n an interview with Felicia R. Lee in the N e w York T i
m e s nearly a decade ago, you .said
thai "I'm tired of seeing films about ourselves as victinu...
reacting to external forces.. .. I hate the
urban testosterone films. "^ Would you elaborate on this genre?
J D : I'm getting myself into trouble here. Actually, I suggested
that in ///M.nV/n.i [ 1982)—
how we're portrayed in films to entertain other people (Figure
2). Less so now because
of Spike Lee. But Spike is one person. You want me to
elaborate on the testosterone
films? Because they've changed; it's romantic comedies now.
M M : What's a testosterone mome?
J D : T h e young "urban male" films made in the 1990s. I can
look at these films and
say, "well done, bravo,'" but I'm nol a guy. I grew up in the
Queensbridge Projects and
cotild watch the same thing by looking out die window. 1 did
not grow up in a middle-

class environment, so I don't see poverty; drag abuse, iolence,
and i.gnorance as being
exotic or something worth imitating. I did not sit up al night
worrying about Dracula
5 See the Jessie Maple Collection at the Slack Film
Center/Archive, Indiana Universily-Bloomington.
6 Houston Baker Jr, "Not Without My Daughters" Transition57
(1992); 1 5 1 .
7 Fof mofe on Dash's thoughts abod! Morrison, see ibid., 151-
152.
8 Felicia R. Lee, "Where a Filmmaker's Im^ination To(A Root,"
New Vort ïïmes, December 3 , 1 9 9 7 .
10
CinemaJoumal49 No.2 I Winter2010
Figure 2. Lonette McKee in Illusions (Julie Dash, 1982).
either, becau.se growing up I knew
vampires would not pass 12th Street
in Quecnsbridge. To me, a horror
movie is watching a stor>' about lam-
üies suffering from drugs, poverty,
etc. Perhaps that's why I want to sec
a lot more when I attend a moue
theater or purchase a DT).
M M : What kind of films doyou want to

see about Aßican Americans?
J D : I want there to be more of ev-
ery type of film you can imagine. I
want to be able to see us in Middle
Earth. We don't get to go beyond
certain boundaries. We liave to stay
in this country and do this, that, and
the other. Maybe we can run around
in war a bit, but we're largely por-
trayed working that plow, walking
the street.-i selling dnigs, or being vic-
tims of drugs. I want to fly to the moon. Where's our Lord of
the Rings (Peter Jack.son,
2001-2003) trilogy? Where's our JVornia (Andrew Adamson,
2005, 2008)? As a child,
we grow up knowing that we can't go there, and if we do, we'll
get shot. We can't
imagine ourselves running with antelope. We have to be
practical. We only get to be
young until we're old, and often we're old as very young people-
Where's our magic?
We're not allowed this magic, this space to explore. How do you
grow up to be a
lull human being? I didn't have that space wben I was growing
up. 1 knew that you
couldn't be this, you couldn't be that. So, many of us don't even
try. And the result can
be disastrous. Today there's more of us to see in moies, but it's
largely tbe girlfriend
with the turkey neck.
M M : Have your views about Hollywood clianged since lite
interview unth Lee?
J D : What did I say then? [Laughs]

M M : ïbu said it was a bad scene.
J D : Let me say this: It's now an even more complex scene than
ever before. With the
success of Tyler Perry, F. Gar' Gray, Gina Prince-BKihwood,
Will Smith, Tim Story,
Mara Brock /Vkil, and Shonda Rhime.s, one wonders why it is
still so difficult to con-
vince the powers that be that we do, in fact, have an audience.
It's a constant fight.
You will have to fight for your ground and how you see the
wodd, for not only your
own mind's eye, but also for your children and their children.
We need to be dedicated,
witb a concerted and focused effort to demand more balanced
images of ourselves out
there. People say things have changed. They bave changed, but
in many ways they
have not.
11
Cinema Journal 49 I No. 2 i Winter 2010
M M ; What waiyour e.^erimce transiäoningßom filmmaker to
novelist to producer and now to all of
the above? Are there differences and similarities between
literary and visual modes of narration?
J D : I think it's easier to be a filmmaker than a novelist. IVc
been a filmmaker longer
than a novelist. Last summer, I was working on a no-cl, and I

can't express myself
through words like I can through images., thnnigh pictures, I'm
n(.)t as Huid.
M M : In W h y We M a k e Movies,_>ioii were queried about
Forrest Whitaker's direction of Waiting
to E x h a l e (1995). You replied, "I think he did afinejob¡ but
it would hme made a big d^rence had
a woman directed it.. .""^ h there a woman's sensibility to
filmmaking that is differentfiom a man's?
J D : I think it would have made a difference in the directing
and there is a difference of
sensibilities between men and women. It's in the tiny specifics.
I know it sort of Hows
from the top down. You need a strong woman in the producing,
writing, directing, as
well as editing areas to retain the tiny specifics and integrity of
the film. The director
now supervises the editing because it's easy to cut something
out. A director can shoot
something and it'll never make it into the finished film because
someone else says,
"What is that? We don't need that." It's always "we." or my
favorite line . . . , "it goes
oH' story, it's off stor)'." But men and women think differently.
They want to see diHer-
ent things. If you have an all-male team working on a woman's
film it will be missing
some things. Like music, if it's the beat, the beat is just off, but
that doesn't mean tbat
men cannot direct women's movies and that women cannot
direct men's movies. I'm
saying, if it's going to be an all-male team—producer, director,

writer, and editor—you
better bring in some women to say, "Hey! You missed a beat
here."
MM; What wouldyou have changed hadyou dinxted Waiting to
Exhale.'
JD: I'm gonna stay out of it.
M M : Regarding the Rosa Parks Story, j ' o u said that you
were ^'determined to get a more womanist
vision, a female version of what was going on because it was a
very male-centered script.'"^^ WhaCs
a ''momanist vision"?
J D : T h e script I was handed was more about Raymond Parks
and his point of 'icw
than Rosa Parks. It wa.s not about her. And I think that's why
Angela [Bassett] wanted
me to massage the script by Paris Qualles—the writer of record.
Together, we made
the appropriate changes.
M M ; îbu were also especially aitieal of how the meaning of
independent film has been appropriated
and co-opted by Hollywood. Regarding companies like
Miramax, you said that it's "not independent.
It's not a filmmaker's vision. TJiey're not signature films."^^
H'fiat doyou mean by "signature fibns,"
and are they differentßom auteur films?

J D : A signature film is like an auteur film. It implies the
director has control over
everything. However, filmmaking is a collaboration, unless the
fiUn is some kind of
surveillance with one camera.
9 George Alexander, Why We Make Movies (New York: Harlem
Moon/Broadway Books, 20031, 236,
10 Ibid.. 2 4 1 ,
11 Ibid., 236.
12
Cinema Journal 49 | No. 2 | Winter 2010
MM: li time a Julie Dash stature?
J D : I hope so. I'm working toward one. I think each project
develops organically, even
if you're handed a script as with the Rosa Paás Story You sit
with it and walk the site.
You do your own research, which I did and discovered
wonderful things like putting
additional period buses in the ftim, changing locations to
enhance the drama, and
sometimes narrowing the foeus of the story beats.
M M : If isaiv any one of your films, is there something about it
that would identißiyou as the author?
for example, I think Euzhan Paky's S u g a r C a n e Alley is /ler
most original film. Once she migrated

to Hollywood, her unique .-¡tfle was less discernible and
apparent, in my vim:
J D : She has made other films that they have not distributed in
the US, including a
musical. There's a film about a little g r̂ l who sees a ghost or is
a ghost of a little girl.
They did not release it here because tiie>- said. "Il'll confuse
people with subtitles."
/Vnothcr factor is when you have four hundred questions and lui
people with the legal
right to tweak a film after >ou hae completed it. They own the
film and have a right
to tweak it, so they say.
M M : You hai>e asserted on seoeralocassions that you "want to
see authenlidty'-^''^ What do you metm
by "autiienticity"?
J D : By that, I mean you can feel that it comes out of the
filmmaker, out of the commu-
nity, out of the issues, out of the events, out of history: You
don't want somethingjust
grafted onio a film. You don'l put a hat on a person without
feeling a namraJ sense that
it's right, it means that you know that something is fkming and
moving right and that
ihe history is there and recognizable to you. When you know
that the parallel streams
of information, symbolism, and metaphor coming together are
nol silly or stupid. We
kiTow, we feel the natural rhythm of the stoiy situation, or
event. U's a glorious feeling,
Unfortunately, I feel it more with foreign films than I do with

those made in the US.
M M : Can a filmmaker retain a critical and independent stance
in Hollywood ^en the pressures
we've talked aboul?
J D : Beyond the overused arçument about '"commerce vs. art,"
I think the main goal
we have to keep in focus is that we can have both. E'eryone
else does. Why do we
have to remain especially limited in our thinking and doing? It's
not jusl about putting
black folks in front and behind of the camera. If you hire people
who tell the same
stories ihe same ways that other folks do, then what's the point?
I see that happening a
lot. They are fulfilling quotas. ¡xià it's like, "Well we have to
do it this way because this
is the way we've always done it."
M M : Let's reidsit the interviewj-ou had with Houston Baker in
1992. I want to read a statement
that you made because J think that it it as reUvant today as it
was fifteen years ago. Regardingyour
narrative approach to D a u g h t e r s of t h e D u s t , you
rejected ''the male western narrative for Üie nar-
rative mode based on oral tradition as exemplified fry the
Aßican credo. "'^ Since D a u g h t e r s , have
you changedyour view about this mode of narrahon?
12 Ibid.. 242.

13 Baker, "Nol Without My Cöughiers," 1 5 1 .
13
J D : I think there was some confusion there, and my statement
was misrepresented.
1 was saying then, that before Daughters qf lhe Dust, I was not
using the Western male
narrative based upon the "tall tale of the once upon a time'" and
the linearity of Act
1, Act 2, and Act 3. Now, in some of my other films, Vm
working within the Western
narrative because it is easily grasped by audiences. Bui you can
insert other things in
there to make the audience consider and feel ihat there's
something more that you're
tr)ing to tell.
Black Filmmaking: Making Progress?
M M : }t>u haue noted ¡hat dtaing tke 1U6O. and 70s, black
filmmaking on the East Coa.it was largely
deiioted to docu/nentary. while on the llht Coast, to narrative
film. Apart Jrom the dominance of
Hollyuiood, its commercial concerns, production practices, and
narrative consentions, were there other
factors that account for this difference?

J D : 1 think the West Goast got lucky, first with Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ÍMelvin
Van Peebles, 197!) and then with Sluift (Gordon Parks, 1971).
"Hey we've got a good
thing going, let's make some blaxploitation films." They really
took off.
M M : And why the documentary on the East Coast?
J D : Because East Goast filmmakers were more interested in
authenticity, the truth,
answering que.stioas, and exposing situations. Of course, the
budgets for documenta-
ries were smaller than for narrative features. You don't need a
large crew; )'ou can do
it faster and more efficiently. I came out of that East Goa^t
filmmaking tradition and
ound up on the West Goast trying to apply that same aesthetic
to narrative films.
M M : Have the dynamics and procaces qf filmmaking now
changed ihe trajectory qf the West Coast
narrative, East Coast doairnentary?
J D : Yes, there are many narrative films being made on the
East Goast, even in the
Midwest, including here in Indiana. The playing field is now
leveled by digital
technology.
M M : ïi>u haue (userted that during ¡he nineties the climate for
black filmmakers it'ct more difßadt
and competitive- You said, "'ílé don't even .see ourselves right
now ai a movement, i don'i think t/iese

filmmakers are thinking in terms qf history and progression. '"'"'
Is the climate ßr black filmmaking
any better today?
J D : During the nineties it was very competitive, I now realize
that the competitive
climate for black filmmaking was created by Hollywood
determined to make "testos-
terone films." Hollywood made sure that when they took
pictures of these homeboy
films from the hood that they didn't include women. 1 remember
.someone said, "Well,
they didn't know where you were." I was with Mario Van
Peebles in Germany at-
tending a film festival. My entertainment lawyer also
represented the Hudlin brothers
and Mario, so how could he say they couldn't find me? Til never
forget that tbey got
14 Ibid.. 159,
Cinema Journal 49 , No, 2 i Winter 2010
a black woman and cultural critic—Karin Grisby-Bates—to say
that these were the
[male] filmmakers making it and that my movie [Daughters]
was a television movie. She
wrtjte tliat in the JVew York Times, and people repeated that it
wasn't theatrical. I said,
"No, it's not a television movie." It was American Playhouse
that coprodticed my him,
along with Straight Out of Brooklyn (Matty Rich, 1991) and

Stand and Deliver (Ramón
Menéndez. 1988). But Daughters became a "tele'ision movie'*
because it suited their
purposes. At Sundance, we were all interviewed, bui all the
interviews were skewed to-
ward the black male filmmakers while the female filmmakers
were tossed aside. I now
understand that it was a concerted effort to promote black male
filmmakers, while they
ignored c'er)-one else, as if we didn't exist. We do, and I am
still arotmd.
M M : Are black filmmakers as self-serving and opportunistic
today asyou, seemingly, have .suggested
that many were in the nineties?
J D : What was going on back then was frightening. I recall an
incident at the Sundance
Film Festival when the director Matty Rich said, "He; Julie. 1
was wanting to meet
you." I replied, "Hey, Matty, how you doing?'" A publicist
immediately cut in and said,
"You two don't talk." I was, like, when did this happen?
^Wl: And now?
J D : It's not like that now, but it's certainly not like the way it
was in the eighties when
everyone would meet at the film festivals. It was the only time
we got to .see ever>'one,
and it was great. I think we've learned that the competitiveness
of the nineties didn't
help anyone; no one got to make any more movies. Since the
eighties, the only one
who's been consistent is Spike Lee.

M M : You said to Houston Baker t/mt in She's G o t t a H a v e
It (1986), Spike Ue "brought life back
into the black indefiendentfilm movement. "^^ Now. ivith Spike
Lee ensconced in Hollywood—except
for occasional departures., like his recent take on the Katrina
debacle—is the US black independmtfilm
movement overshadowed by his prominence in Hollywood?
J D : No. And we need more filmmakers like Spike Lee. He just
keeps exploring and
stretching the envelope. People don't understand how much
battering he took. He just
keeps coming back, putting blinders on and doing what he's
going to do. I low that
he takes chances. If we had ten more Spikes, we'd be in good
shape. And some female
Spikes, too. T h e documentary on Katrina [ÍI-TWTI the ÏM'ees
Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,
2006] had you weeping. I understand that he's going to do a
dramatic film on Katrina.
Then he had the thriller bank mbbery movie {Inside Man.
2006), although it didn'i feel
at all like Spike. I won't let anybody talk badly about him. He
look a chance with Slie
Hate Me (2004). It was five different movies in one and had a
little Spikeness in it. O K ,
it was French.
M M : Is there another Spike Lee out there to revitalizf the
black independent film rnovemenl?
J D : I know there are many Spikes who have that drive and

sense of wit.
15 Ibid., 161.
15
Cinema Journal 49 | No. 2 _ Winter 2010
MM: Doyou have anyone in mind?
JD: Shola Lynch, Sylvain White, Darnell Martin, and Antoine
Fuqua.
M M : Let's corulude here with jour current project. IVhat's it
about?
JD: There's a Nancy Wilson song: "Now Vm a woman."
Everything i.s music. You
carry tbat around and one day you say, "Hey, I'm going to do a
film about 'first I was
a child, now I'm a lady."" [Laughs] It's a runiantic trilogy. The
main character—a
woman^is a perfumer and her life has been influenced and
informed by three distinct
fragrances.
MM: Thankyou, Julie Dash.
JT): And thank you too. Hf
I am indebted to Ihe mottjrmous C i n e m a J n u r n a l
readersßr Iheir aitictit commmls on an emher draji
16

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Making History: Julie Dash
Author(s): Patricia Mellencamp
Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1,
Women Filmmakers and
the Politics of Gender in Third Cinema (1994), pp. 76-101
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346614
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Patricia Mellencamp
Making History: Julie Dash
If history is a way of counting time, of measuring change, then
femi-
nists, whether white, black, brown, or red, are operating
another tempo-
rality, questioning the timing of history. In an essay about
Claire
Johnston,1 Meaghan Morris argues that because feminism is
both "skep-
tical" (of history) and "constructive," it is "untimely" for most
histori-
ans: "To act (as I believe feminism does) to bring about
concrete social
changes while at the same time contesting the very bases of
modem think-
ing about what constitutes 'change' is to induce intense
strain."2

Feminism is untimely history that is ongoing, never over, or
over
there, but here and now. For women, history is not something
to be
recorded or even accepted, but something to be used, something
to be
changed. But first, history must be remembered. As bell hooks
so poi-
gnantly said, "As red and black people decolonize our minds
we cease
to place value solely on the written document. We give
ourselves back
memory. We acknowledge that the ancestors speak to us in a
place
beyond written history."3
Julie Dash calls her history what if, "speculative fiction," what
Laleen Jayamanne, a Sri Lankan/Australian filmmaker, would
call "vir-
tual history."4 Cultural difference more than sexual difference
provides the
context. (As hooks and many critics have pointed out, the
concept of
"sexual difference" at the base of feminist film theory is
"racialized"5.)
The local (differences of appearance, custom, law, culture)
illuminates
the global (our commonalities of family, fiction, thought,
feeling). The
local, women's history, becomes the ground of the global,
feminist the-
ory. Thus, we learn about differences and experience the
recognition of
sameness. We feel history, as presence, passed on from
grandmother to
daughters and sons, a living history that is nourishing, not

diminishing.
Copyright 01994 by Frontiers Editorial Collective.
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FRONTIERS, VOL. XV, NO. 1
The result is cultural appreciation, not cultural appropriation,
to para-
phrase hooks's distinction.
Although much history is not recorded in print or film, it
cannot
be erased. Like age, we carry our history, our forebears, on our
faces,
their spirits indelibly imprinted in our memories. For Dash,
history can
be reincarnated, recollected, its spirit given new life as living
memory.
Nana Peazant is the historian, the great-grandmother of
Daughters of
the Dust who keeps history alive. "We carry these memories
inside us.
They didn't keep good records of slavery... We had to hold
records in
our head."
Dash balances the experimental and the experiential, making
affective history, a history of collective presence both material

and spiri-
tual. What I call empirical feminism - archival and activist -
invokes
history and acts to alter the course of time.
By locating issues of race and gender within specific contexts
that
are simultaneously historical and experiential, Dash's films
expand the
contours of female subjectivity - both onscreen and in the
audience -
to include women of all ages and appearances, complex
emotion, and
collective identification.6 When the enunciation shifts into
women's
minds and into history (which includes our experience and
memory),
we cease thinking like victims and become empowered, no
matter what
happens in the narrative. As Collette Lafonte (a woman of
color) asks in
Sally Potter's Thriller (1979), "Would I have wanted to be the
hero?"
Like the films of Potter (a British independent
filmmaker/performance
artist/theorist involved with Screen culture of the 1970s and
early
1980s who has a successful feature commercial film in 1993
release,
Orlando), Dash's films resolutely answer "Yes!" without
hesitation,
knowing that "being the hero" is a state of mind as well as
action, a
condition of self-regard and fearlessness. Being the hero is,
precisely,

not being the victim.
Illusions
Mignon Dupree becomes such a hero. This light-skinned
African
American passing for white in Julie Dash's Illusions is an
executive
assistant at National Studio, a movie studio. The film makes it
clear
that Mignon has status and influence at the studio - which she
is will-
ing to risk. She is given the difficult task of salvaging a
musical that has
lost synch in the production numbers. A young Black singer,
Ester
Jeeter, is brought in to dub the voice-over for the blond, white
star,
Leila Grant. Ester recognizes Mignon's heritage; they become
friends
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2020 09:04:13 UTC
and speak freely to each other. Mignon negotiates a fair deal
for the
singer's work. Meanwhile, Mignon is surrounded by racist
comments
from the white bit players. She is also being pursued by the

studio
boss's son, a lecherous soldier on leave who hangs around the
office
making passes. After finding a photograph of Mignon's Black
boy-
friend, Julius, he confronts Mignon with his knowledge of her
secret.
Rather than back off, Mignon fearlessly acknowledges that she
is pass-
ing. She speaks passionately against the industry that has
erased her
participation. The point of view and the voice-over narration,
which
frames the film, both belong to this beautiful and powerful
character.7
The setting of this 1983 short film is a Hollywood movie studio
in
the 1940s, during World War II. The historical re-creation of
the time
period is remarkable for such a low-budget film. Historically,
Mignon,
a sophisticated and stylish African American woman, resembles
Lela
Simone, a sound editor with the Arthur Freed unit at MGM
until the
early 1950s. This gorgeous, fashionable white woman, who also
served
as executive assistant to Freed, was reportedly one of the best
editors in
the business. She was given the arduous task of synching music
with
the production numbers of the MGM musicals. In exasperation
with
being asked to do the impossible, she finally walked off the
team, and

out of film history, during the postproduction of Gigi. Unlike
Simone,
Dupree determines to remain in the industry and change things.
However, like so many women in Hollywood, what she really
wants she is unable to get - film projects of her own. She wants
the
studio to make important films about history, including the
contribu-
tion of Navajos whose language could not be deciphered by the
Japa-
nese code breakers during the war. Like Dash, Dupree is
impassioned
about the importance of film: "History is not what happens.
They will
remember what they see on screen. I want to be here, where
history is
being made."
Although Illusions has no illusions, no happily ever after of
romance, whether marriage or the climb to stardom for Ester
Jeeter or a
promotion to producer for Mignon Dupree, the star of Illusions
is a
Black woman who is powerful, ambitious, intelligent and
supports
another Black woman. This is a film about women's work and
thought.
Mignon's goal is to be a filmmaker and to change history.
Unlike
women in 95 percent or more of Hollywood movies, she is not
defined
by romance or flattered by male desire; neither is she bullied or
affected by the white male gaze.
Illusions revises Hollywood studio history, which erased

African
American women from representation and history by synching
their
offscreen voices to onscreen white women. Women of color
were
78
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heard, but not seen or recognized. When women of color were
there,
on the sound track or passing on screen, they were not
remembered or
not recognized. Illusions inscribes the point of view missing
from U. S.
film history, African American women (both onscreen and in
the audi-
ence) granting visibility and audibility by synching image to
offscreen
voice. Illusions also charges Hollywood, which did not make
films
about people of color even during World War II, and the nation
with
hypocrisy and racism.
Illusions is a substantial revision of Singin' in the Rain (a 1952
MGM/Arthur Freed musical that mythologizes the coming of
sound
in 1927 to Hollywood, turning economics into romance). While

both
films concern the problem of synched sound, Singin' gives us
fiction as
history; Dash reveals history as fiction. She remakes history
and
changes it. She reveals what is repressed by the "cinematic
apparatus"
- and it is actual, not imaginary; in reality, not in the
unconscious.8
Synchronization - the dilemma of holding sound and image
together
in a continuous flow, of giving voice to face, of uniting the
acoustic and
the visual - is not just a technique, and not just played for
laughs as it
is in Singin'. Sound editing and synchronization are strategies9
that con-
ceal the politics of racism.
Illusions corrects absences in film theory. The disavowal of
Singin'
(that some of Debbie Reynolds's songs were dubbed by another
singer)
becomes the repression of race in Illusions. Like the seamless
continuity
style that conceals its work (e.g., editing, processing,
discontinuity),
Hollywood cinema has concealed or erased (and prohibited) the
work
of people of color, on- and offscreen. Thus, the psychoanalytic
mecha-
nism of the spectator - disavowal, denial, and repudiation1o -
at the
base of film theory, and the key to the feminist model of sexual
differ-
ence, is revised and complicated by this film.11

Rather than the white male star, Don Lockwood/Gene Kelly,
who
dominates Singin' in center frame, close-ups, and voice-over,
along
with performance numbers and the story, this film stars a Black
woman as a studio executive. She is given the voice-over,
center frame,
close-ups, and the story. While the dilemma of the 1952
musical was
love at (first?) sight and romance - celebrating the coupling of
the
proper white woman (the good girl) to the (white?) male star -
this
film concerns women's professional work and thoughts. Mignon
Dupree's power does not come from sexuality but from talent,
ability,
high purpose, and self-confidence. Unlike Cathy Selden, she
makes it
on her own, not through the intervention of men.
Singin' divided women against each other - Cathy Selden
versus
Lina Lamont - and humiliated Lamont in public, whereas
Illusions
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unites Black women. Men pursuing women is sexual
harassment in
Illusions whereas in Singin' it is romance. The problem in
Singin' was
synching the proper white female voice with the white female
face,
staged as backstage film history. Illusions says this momentary
repres-
sion is only the tip of the iceberg, which Singin' conceals
through its
partial revelation. Illusions declares that behind white faces
were Black
voices - the source of pleasure and profit. Black performers
were in
history, but they were not remembered, there and
simultaneously
erased. The studios profiteered on this presence/absence, this
lack of
stardom and publicity.
On the theoretical level, just as the work of the sound track has
historically been subservient to the image track, so were
women of
color subordinate to white women. And in the rare instances
when
actresses of color were onscreen, they could only fill
stereotypical roles:
lustful temptresses, servants, or mammies, off to the side,
marginal to
the star's center frame and hence barely noticed. Often,
masquerade
would make them white Anglo - as happens in Singin' to Rita
Moreno who plays Zelda, the starlet. Being beautiful meant
looking
white - young, thin, smooth.

The dubbing sequence in Illusions is thus a very powerful
revision
of this white aesthetic: with Mignon looking on, and reflected
on the
glass wall of the sound recording booth, Illusions intercuts the
blond
actress with shots of the Black singer dubbing in her song.
Jeeter is given
glamour shots and the last, lingering close-up, and the white
no-talent
actress is only a bit part. Without voice, she has no substance.
Dash
reverses the blond standard of the star system that defined
conventions
of female beauty within a regimented, standardized uniformity.
For Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "the first deviances are
racial." "Racism operates by the determination of degrees of
deviance
in relation to the White-Man face." Racism has nothing to do
with the
other, only with "waves of sameness." "The Face" represents
"White
Man himself"; "the face is Christ".12 (I think of the messianic
ending of
D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, with the superimposition of
the white
Jesus Christ hovering over the happily-ever-after couples and
indeed
the entire nation. It is only recently that these conventions of
represent-
ing race are beginning to be regularly challenged.13) While
speaking of
difference, film theory has perpetuated sameness - whiteness
(and

heterosexuality). However, film theory, if not film history, is
richer than
its application. The theoretical base can also reveal blind spots.
Thus,
the baby need not be thrown out with the bathwater.
Along with film (and national) history and the work of sound,
the
"illusion" of the title is the practice of "passing": Mignon
Dupree is a
80
2020 09:04:13 UTC
Black woman "passing" as white.14 Illusions complicates the
relation
between sight and knowledge, giving us a process of double
vision,
double knowledge, a revision of the concepts of masquerade,
camou-
flage, and mimicry. The film provides an inversion of John
Berger's
1972 distinction (in Ways of Seeing) of women seeing
themselves being
seen. Mignon watches herself being seen incorrectly. In effect,
she is
being seen but not always recognized. The story plays off
misrecogni-
tion. She is not merely the object of sight but also the witness,

the seer
more than the seen.
Mignon is "seen" in double vision - white characters see her
one
way, African Americans another. At one moment, her
concealment is
in jeopardy. Dupree looks apprehensive that Jeeter's remarks
will give
her away to the other women in the office. But she is
immediately reas-
sured by Jeeter, who says, "Do you pretend when you're with
them?
Don't worry, they can't tell like we can." For the spectator, who
"they"
and "we" are becomes a question. When Mignon is talking to
her
mother on the telephone, she says: "I am still the same
person.... they
didn't ask and I didn't tell. I was hoping that after the war
things
would change ... and I wanted to be part of that change. If they
don't
change in this industry, then they won't change at all." The
truth is, of
course, that she is the same person in spite of what they think.
In his "Seminar on the Purloined Letter," Jacques Lacan
describes
the connections between seeing and knowing, a system that
extends
looks in time. The gaze in cinema has many permutations and
options.15 To Laura Mulvey's triad of the looks of the camera,
charac-
ter, and audience must be added seeing (and not seeing),
interpreting

(and misinterpreting), and knowing (and not knowing). To the
repre-
sentation and the audience (film spectators) can be added
gender (men
at men, men at women, women at men, women at women), age,
sexual
preference, race, cultural history, and class (although in the
United
States, this can be amorphous). Seeing depends on knowing;
scopo-
philia (the sexual pleasure of sight) is linked to epistemophilia
(the sex-
ual pleasure of knowing).
Passing has to do with sight, interpretation, and knowledge -
with seeing (or not) what is visible (or not), there to be known
(or not).
Near the end of the film, Mignon says: "Now I'm an illusion,
just like
the films. They see me but they can't recognize me." Passing
depends
on whites not seeing, misinterpreting, and not knowing. This
igno-
rance says something about the reason for the practice of
passing -
institutional and legal racism.
Passing is hiding, out in the open. Rather than being buried
beneath the surface, the secret is immediately visible but not
seen. As
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Edgar Allan Poe and neocolonial subjects so well knew, the
surface can
be the best hiding place. In "The Purloined Letter," Dupin, the
detec-
tive, discovered that the letter was hidden in plain view, amidst
other
letters. "Because it was right out in the open, right in front of
every-
one's eyes, the letter was not noticed." The "principle of
concealment,"
to paraphrase Poe, is the "excessively obvious" - which escapes
observation. The "intellect ... passes unnoticed considerations
too
obtrusive, too self-evident." Sometimes the most "sagacious
expedi-
ent" is not concealing something. However, after someone
shows us
what is there, its existence becomes obvious. We can see only
what we
know, until someone shows us something else.
When the white soldier sexually bothering Mignon throughout
the film discovers the photograph of Julius, her Black
boyfriend, his
ardor cools. His scopophilia depended on his lack of
knowledge. Thus,
breaking the linkage between scopophilia and epistemophilia
has great
possibilities for feminism. Rather than intimidating Dupree, the
revela-
tion empowers her, concluding the film on a courageous and

optimis-
tic note - although bell hooks would disagree with this
interpretation.
When questioned by the GI, Mignon replies, "Why didn't I tell
you I
wasn't a white woman? I never once saw my boys fighting....
You
have eliminated my participation in the history of this country.
We are
defending a democracy overseas that doesn't exist in this
country."
Perhaps when it comes to white men, history, the military, and
power,
"we" could include white women.16
Showing us Ester Jeeter, the Black female voice behind the
white
female image, is one revelation of the repressed of history.
This tactic
reverses Poe's second strategy: the contents of the
incriminating letter
are never revealed within the story or to the reader. (This is
akin to Sin-
gin': Debbie Reynolds does not sing all of her songs in the
film.) Thus,
the film issues a challenge to film history as well as theory.
Whiteness is
not neutral, natural, or real -but a system, a "racialized"
convention of
the continuity style of Hollywood cinema. In fact, race, its
absence and
its presence as stereotype, might be a main attribute, along
with hetero-
sexual romance, of the continuity narrative and style. Race is
prominent
in the Motion Picture Production Code of 1933. This was the

film indus-
try's self-imposed, self-regulated code, which governed film
content for
many years; under "Particular Applications, Item 11.6," it
reads: "Misce-
genation (sex relationship between the white and Black races)
is forbid-
den." Segregation has been the legal or operative rule for
exhibition
throughout this century - with either segregated theaters or
separate
spaces within theaters.
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Dash enriches feminist film theory through her model of double
vision/double knowledge, which she complicates by address -
which
unsettles any easy assumptions about spectatorship, race, and
gender.
Like Sally Potter's Thriller (which also starred a woman of
color) and
its key role in the formulation of feminist narrative theory,
Illusions
provides an advanced modeling of representation and reception
-
critically revising theories of vision through knowledge and

sound.
Illusions makes intellectual arguments through the sound track,
including pronouns that define and address subjectivity. The
white
female secretary says to Mignon: "You certainly are good to
them. I
never know how to speak to them." Mignon replies: "Just speak
to
them as you would to me." Who is "we" and who is "them"
depends
on what one can see and understand, and on history, which
includes
race. In this film, African American women are together,
united, and
stars; white women are blond bit players, either big-boobed
bimbos,
vapid stars, or prejudiced secretaries, subservient to and
accomplices
of white men - unlike the intelligent Black stars, who know
more than
the white men.
Illusions concludes with a prophecy, in voice-over: "We would
meet again, Jeeter and I. To take action without fearing. I want
to use
the power of the motion picture.... there are many stories to be
told
and many battles to begin." Mignon Dupree is a film ancestor
of Julie
Dash. And, indeed, they soon meet again.
Afterthoughts
Other critics, although fewer than one would imagine, have
writ-

ten about this short film, with interpretations different from
mine.
Manthia Diawara, however, recommended an essay with which,
to my
chagrin, I was not familiar.17 (I am grateful to Diawara for his
sugges-
tions - made, to a degree, with the presumption that I knew
little of
film theory - he recommended critics who have written about
femi-
nist film theory and race.18 He also suggested that I cut out a
section on
Eisenstein/Deleuze on film affect.)
For S. V. Hartman and Farah Jasmine Griffin, Illusions' critical
flaw is the use of Hollywood conventions of narrative
representation
to critique dominant cinema. "Unless the form as well as the
content
of the passing tale is challenged, [its oppositional] possibilities
remain severely limited".19 This critique is predicated on the
belief in
the radicality of artistic form, the notion that aesthetics can
change
the world.
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Like many scholars who were influenced by Soviet film
theorists,
Brecht, and Godard, and who participated in 1960s activism
and 1970s
theory/organizing, I advocated this position, as did Laura
Mulvey in
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In fact, my belief in
the radi-
cality of form was the reason I did not write about this film
years ago.
Many of us - for example, Peter Wollen, Peter Gidal, and
Stephen
Heath - believed that revelation of the apparatus, of the
concealed
work of cinema, would result in political change, which has
hardly
been the case. Thus, like many activists/critics writing about
popular
culture, my position has changed and become more inclusive. I
now
see radicality of form as one, not the only, option.
Yes, Illusions does imitate, does aspire to be, to replace, what
it is
critiquing, Hollywood film. (And, for example, it doesn't have
the pro-
duction budget to pull this off, particularly on the sound track,
where
editing is doubly denied, very intricate, and highly expensive,
or in
the visual editing, which is off just enough seconds to make it
awk-
ward. I would love to see Dash add more research and make a
big-
budget feature from this version.) But Illusions also wants to
change

things. And there are many tactics to bring about change. One
of the
most effective is to tell the story in a familiar style but switch
the point
of view and enunciation. Many viewers will not notice that the
politi-
cal ground has shifted.
But this is only the first of my differences with Hartman and
Grif-
fin. They see the synching sequence as emblematic of the film's
dis-
avowal, its central flaw: the voices of Mignon and Ester
"become
unanchored from their black bodies and are harbored within
white
female bodies..... their work requires the decorporealization of
the
black female voice ... to render docile, the threat of the black
body."20
On the contrary, I would suggest that this is true of Hollywood
film,
not this film. This scene has double vision. By inscribing the
presence
of Black women, the lie of absence is revealed. It is the white
body that
is unanchored, particularly from the star system.
Black women are given center screen, the narrative, and voice.
White women are banal and boring, particularly Leila Grant.
She can-
not sing or dance. Unlike Ester, she is not star material. While
Black
women are given great dialogue, white women make only vapid
or

racist remarks. Black women are beautiful, intelligent, and
various.
White women are stupid and bland carbon copies.
The authors have serious reservations about the "passing tale"
because "blacks occupy subordinate and supplemental
positions." "The
traditional mulatta is a character for white audiences, created
to bring
whites to an understanding of the effects of racism.... the
passing tale
84
2020 09:04:13 UTC
calls for agency on the part of the white viewer." The tale
"foreclos[es] a
discussion of black lives" and presents "an essential idea of
blackness,"
defined as "a natural body." The essay does concede that "Dash
suc-
cessfully challenges the conventions of the traditional mulatta
melodramas.... Dash's passing heroine realizes the possibilities
of
some of her desires ... nor does she cease to aspire toward
power and
authority in the white man's world."21
Although Dash "attempts to make Mignon a figure with whom

black viewers identify," "Mignon facilitates Ester's
consumption by
the cinematic apparatus.... Ester's own agency seems confined
to wit-
nessing and pretending." The authors conclude that "to identify
with
Mignon would be to accept our position as subordinate to her,
to
engage in an act of self-hatred. Though Dash attempts to
establish a
relationship of equality between Ester and Mignon, between the
black
woman viewer and Mignon, that relationship is a farce. Mignon
occu-
pies a space of privilege denied black women. Our only healthy
response to her is ultimately one of rejection."22
This analysis caused me great consternation. Could this be
true?
Was I so far off? Was my identification with Mignon's courage
and
compassion, and with the sisterly bond between the two
women, the
proof of the film's disavowal of Black women? Did the film
ultimately
address white women, like the tragic mulatta tale? Was there a
"white"
response and a "Black" response?23 But then I remembered
that bell
hooks and I were in agreement. The next day, Diawara's newly
pub-
lished anthology, Black American Cinema, arrived at the
bookstore. Toni
Cade Bambara seconded the positive response. She argues that
Mignon's goal was not to "advance a self-interested career....
Mignon

stands in solidarity with Ester. Unlike the other executives who
see the
Black woman as an instrument, a machine, a solution to a
problem,
Mignon acknowledges her personhood and their sisterhood."24
Coming across this essay almost two years after I wrote about
the
film, I was pleased to find other commonalities: "The genre
that Dash
subverts in her indictment of the industry is the Hollywood
story
musical" (141). Regarding the humiliation of Jean Hagen (Lina
Lam-
ont) in several scenes, particularly the film's conclusion, she
asks,
"Does the Reynolds' character stand in solidarity with the
humiliated
woman? Hell no, it's her big career break. Singin' provides
Dash with a
cinematic trope.... The validation of Black women is a major
factor in
the emancipatory project of independent cinema."25 What she
does not
mention is the strange displacement in Singin': Rita Moreno,
Lina's
friend, passing as Anglo.
85
2020 09:04:13 UTC

Like Bambara, bell hooks argues that the "bond between
Mignon
and ... Jeeter is affirmed by caring gestures of affirmation ...
the direct
unmediated gaze of recognition." Mignon's "power is affirmed
by her
contact with the younger Black woman whom she nurtures and
pro-
tects. It is this process of mirrored recognition that enables
both Black
women to define their reality.... the shared gaze of the two
women
reinforces their solidarity." She calls the film "radical,"
"opening up a
space for the assertion of a critical, Black, female spectatorship
... new
transgressive possibilities for the formulation of identity."26
("Subversion" is the flip side of the belief in radical action
through
aesthetics. However, "subversion/transgression" is linked to
popular
rather than avant-garde forms; it is derived from cultural
studies, not
the art world. Of course, art and popular culture are no longer
separate
turfs - if they ever were. And like radical aesthetics in "art," I
think
"subversion" overstates the effects of watching TV or seeing a
movie,
particularly one that accepts and admires the Hollywood "mode
of
production." We can think, we can change, but "subvert"?)

Like many proponents of Black independent cinema (in ways,
recapitulating white critics' 1970s embrace of avant-garde
cinema),
hooks claims subversion for this film: a "filmic narrative
wherein the
Black female protagonist subversively claims that space."
Dash's repre-
sentations "challenge stereotypical notions placing us outside
... filmic
discursive practices." The film calls into question the "White
male's
capacity to gaze, define, and know." "Illusions problematizes
the issue
of race and spectatorship. White people in the film are unable
to 'see'
that race informs their looking relations."27 But after the film,
this is
what we all would understand (or "see"), if we were listening.
Daughters of the Dust
All the distributors turned it down. I was told over and over
again
that there was no market for the film. .... I was hearing mostly
white
men telling me, an African American woman, what my people
wanted to see ... deciding what we should be allowed to see.28
In spite of delays and difficulties with financing and
distribution,
Dash took the film on the festival circuit, beginning with
Sundance in
Utah, in 1991. (After seeing an earlier trailer at a PBS
"weekend retreat
at Sundance," American Playhouse and the Corporation for

Public
Broadcasting funded it to the tiny tune of $800,000.29) In the
past two
86
2020 09:04:13 UTC
years, this commercial release by a woman has attracted
substantial
audiences and acclaim. Daughters of the Dust has made film
history.
Unlike the contemporary features by African American men,
this
tale is told from the multiple, intersecting points of view of
women of
all ages - historical women, modem women - including the
spirits
of the unborn. Daughters is about love, respect, acceptance,
and beauty
rather than fear, hatred, and neglect. It embodies hope, not
despair. It
celebrates harmony and life rather than disaster and death. No
wonder
the distributors had trouble! From Grand Canyon (which I
hated) to
Boyz N the Hood (which I loved), contemporary U. S. cinema,
like televi-
sion news, hawks male fear and high anxiety.

History is the setting of Daughters - the Sea Island Gullahs off
the coast of South Carolina at the turn of the century. Dash
calls this
the "Ellis Island for the Africans," the "main dropping off point
for
Africans brought to North America as slaves." Due to its
isolation,
Africans maintained a distinct culture that is re-created,
recalled, recol-
lected. A voice-over, of Nana Peazant, the old woman, the
powerful
head of the family clan, speaking through the ages, says, "I am
the first
and last, I am the whore and the holy one.... many are my
daughters.
I am the silence you cannot understand. I am the utterances of
my
name." After invoking the ancestors through speech, the spirits
of the
unborn, we go to Ibo Landing, the Sea Islands of the South, in
1902.
The landscape is paradise, a splendid tranquillity composed of
pastels,
the pale blue sky, the golden beach, the azure ocean, sounds of
water.
The scene is a family celebration, a beautiful, bountiful feast
for this
extended, rural community.
Yellow Mary, the prodigal daughter, is arriving, returning
home
from the mainland. With her is Trula, her female friend/lover
wearing
yellow; Mary's Christian sister in grey, Viola Peazant; and a
male pho-

tographer, Mr. Snead. The Peazant family - gloriously dressed
in pure,
dazzling white - awaits her on the beach. Some revile Yellow
Mary as
a prostitute; most accept and love her, particularly Eula, the
young
mother of the unborn child. Mary accepts them all and her life.
Hers is
the tolerance of experience seasoned with wisdom. This is a
celebration
not of her homecoming but of the extended family's departure
from
this island for the mainland. Coming and going, their paths
cross.
A young girl's voice sets up the drama in voice-over: "My story
begins before I was born. My great-great-grandmother ... saw
her fam-
ily coming apart." The girl continues as the storyteller, "The
old souls
guided me into the new world," as the camera pans the house.
Thus,
the tale is of the past, of history, a story of memory, or
remembering,
what Toni Cade Bambara calls "cultural continuity." It is an
ending and
87
2020 09:04:13 UTC

also a beginning - like life itself. There are no dualities in this
film.
Things end only to begin anew. Like their ancestors from
Africa, this
family is beginning a journey to a new land.
The film - poised at the moment of the move from agrarian life
to
the migration to the city - reminds "us that there was some
richness
to that agrarian life." hooks refers to the sense of loss that
came with
the migration, what she calls a "psychic loss," which for her is
emblematized by St. Julian Last Child, the Native American in
Daugh-
ters, who stays behind with his African American bride. This is
a recov-
ery of the history of intermarriage between African Americans
and
Native Americans. "That intermarrying has never been depicted
on
the screen, a Native American and an African American
mating, bond-
ing, creating a life together that wasn't just built upon some
lust of the
moment." Dash later asks, "Where have you ever seen a Native
Amer-
ican win in the end and ride off in glory? When have you ever
seen an
African American woman riding off into the sunset for love ...
?" For
Dash, film history exists in this film: "I was drawing on what I
had
experienced watching films by Spencer Williams, films from
the 1930s,

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