Daughters of the Dust has been lauded as one of the most important films to come
out of the African American experience, and is enjoying newfound interest courtesy of a
restoration co-sponsored by Cohen Media Group and a new Blu-ray release. Blu-ray.com staff
writer Jeffrey Kauffman interviewed the film's editor Amy Carey Linton about her experience working on the
film.
Tell us a little bit about your background—where did you go to school and what did you study?
I attended the University of Georgia as a Music Major and then changed to Film in my last year.
What led to that change?
I started out in Music Therapy, and then I went into Music Theory, but my roommate was a film major and I liked what she was doing much better.
What initially interested you about editing?
Well the first film I worked on was right when I finished college. A guy who was head of Special Projects at NBC came and hired a bunch of students as PAs to work on a made for television thing called
Summer of My German Soldier. My job was to pick up the film from the editors and drive it to the airport and vice versa. So I thought I wanted to be a camera loader, but the assistant editor became a really good friend, and I ultimately went to England where he was working and just fell in love with the whole post-production process. I got to see the scoring process and everything and loved it.
How did you get involved with Daughters of the Dust?
Back then before it was done on computers, there was film you had to manage and you needed library skills more than anything. And because you needed basically a bunch of librarians, you kind of came up through the ranks as an apprentice or assistant. I was an Assistant Editor on a film shot in Atlanta called
Leader of the Band where Julie was the DGA trainee. It was a pretty awful movie that I don't think ever got released, but it had Steve Landsberg in it, which was fun. So Julie and I became friends. Julie then moved to LA for several years but when she and AJ (
note: cinematographer Arthur Jafa) were making
Daughters of the Dust they relocated to Atlanta, where I am. And I got called to talk about a job, but I didn't know it had anything to do with Julie, and so when I walked in the room and saw her, it was great, because I love Julie.
The typically unreliable Wikipedia states that editing took over a year to complete. Is that true? Why so long?
Well, Julie and AJ had tried to edit it, but just couldn't manage it, and they also had brought on a guy before they hired me. But a lot of times on a film like this that is so extremely low budget you run out of money. They were busy doing other things besides editing. And they had a young daughter. I actually worked on it about three fourths of a year. It was initially cut to match the script. People talk about it being non-linear, but I tell you the script was way more non-linear. I tried to at least make the Peazant family story chronological, especially after the Executive Director of
American Playhouse screened the first cut and said he couldn't follow the story. (
Note:
Daughters of the Dust aired on PBS as part of the
American Playhouse series.)
Was there a lot of extra footage that needed winnowing down?
Not really, they didn't have the luxury or the budget for a lot of takes. They shot two cameras for most scenes, so not a lot of extra footage, shot with available lighting and reflectors. The sand dunes were protected so you couldn't bring a generator out on the beach, stuff like that. That said, in the final version there were some stories that got dropped.
Do you have a standard approach for editing a scene, or is it more of a "feel your way" situation?
This film was different than most others I've worked on because Julie had a vision, along with AJ, and I just kind of stepped into this subculture and was still learning about it. So there were things that were really significant that I didn't understand, so she definitely had a hand in deciding what should be in there.
I noticed Daughters of the Dust had a lot of dissolves, even when structurally they perhaps weren't called for. Was that a recommendation made by Julie Dash, or your decision?
Well, we wanted it to have a dreamlike quality. But there were images that were symbolic, like Nana's hands and then the girls on the beach playing, with Nana's hands closing over them, which obviously needed to be done as a dissolve. Julie didn't really talk to me about that, though, it just happened. One thing about working with dissolves in those days, you just had to ship it off to an optical place and get it back a couple of days later and hope it would work. I would pack the film in two layers and run it through the machine beforehand to see how it looked, though.
What other projects are you working on?
I just finished a documentary about Robert Shaw the choral conductor, which is making the rounds of film festivals and has won several Best Documentary awards. Michael Dorf is putting together a traveling museum of Jews in rock 'n' roll, and I'm working on some short films with Peter Miller that will be a part of the installations. Marshall Crenshaw and I are also working on a documentary about the record producer Tom Wilson, who has an incredible story.
Thanks, Amy!