All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a Cinematic Generational Journey of Sound

Most Black people pass their generational fables down verbally or leaves clues in the bibles of our elders.  All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt takes this to a whole new level providing a cinematic generational journey via sight and sound.  It is hands down the most eloquently, beautiful piece of cinema I have seen in quite some time.

Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place. Mack never goes far from home.  Throughout the film,  Black culture of the South shapes this generational  family tale, with Mack’s mother, sister and grandmother as powerful forces along the journey

Director Raven Jackson’s striking debut unapologetically immerses us in moments of grief and longing within the thickness of things left unsaid. Her camera is patient and loving, capturing the beauty of Black bodies and life. The influence by Daughters of the Dust director, Julie Dash is evident within the rural quietness filled with every transportive sound of crickets, frogs, and water in its many forms and the nontraditional narrative which borrows from the language of memory.  Of course, I can not continue to blush over the cinematography without paying homage to Jomo Fray’s sumptuous cinematography which massively succeeds in grounding this tale within the landscape of woods, river banks and dirt roads.

Shifts in time are prompted by movement and emotion. The feeling of mud between fingers or the release felt from being outside during a storm. and watching the water take on the image of a storm itself.   Restrained dialogue coupled with subtle and powerful performances from Sheila Atim, Moses Ingram and Zainab Jah, Jackson assists in employing the power of touch to communicate what evades spoken language. It’s an embodied experience that honors the sumptuousness of life and leaves you feeling the rain on your skin.

Produced by Barry Jenkins, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt will wrap you up into a blanket of tradition that stemming from Africa to America unapologetically in all its authencity and splendor.