Time Confusion

Daughters of the Dust is one of the most meaningful and complicated films I've ever watched. Maybe that's because the movie styles I've watched the most are all from Hollywood, and the stroying telling is all straightforward or at least has some kind of explanation.  Thus, we can tell why the Daughters of the Dust is so complicated: the nonlinear storytelling, the lack of explanation, and the use of language. 

Daughters of the Dust, By Julie Dash

In Daughters of the Dust, we all know the narrative is the unborn character, but telling the story of the struggle the ancestors had to face. Those stories are pieces by pieces that don't really directly connect but certainly have the correlation. This kind of structure can help to picturized the African American culture uniquely, especially when this black community has to make a future decision that could influence their life heavily. Even though that nonlinear storytelling can shape a better picture of the African American culture, the lack of explanation makes audiences have some difficulty understanding the idea. The lack of explanation is not the disadvantage of this film, but it does increase the difficulty for me to understand the theme. Also, considering that some of the languages they use are very different from what we are using, the level of complexity has been raised to a whole new level. This fact is like a double-edged sword, which uses the traditional language can help form a more realistic culture but make to fill hard to understand. If I have more time to watch, we would be more than happy to watch it for a second time and embrace the African American culture.