‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’ Writer-Director Raven Jackson Brings Poetry to Motion With First Film

Watching Raven Jackson’s audacious debut feature, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, is like participating in an intimate ritual. The film follows Mack (played by Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a child and Charleen McClure as an adult) as she comes of age in Mississippi, tracking the emotional arc of her life from girlhood to maturity. It’s a poetic and sensorial journey, one that lures us into the major and minor moments of Mack’s life, elliptically introducing us to her family, friends, her first love and a broader, close-knit community. The A24 drama is the kind of unapologetic project that feels increasingly rare in Hollywood. Jackson spoke to THR about the inspirations behind her fearless debut and how she got producers to take a leap of faith. 

What was your inspiration for the film? 

I was interested in playing with form, which I had done with my short film Nettles. I didn’t want the story to move from point A to point B to point C. I was interested in creating an emotional, fluid journey of a life.

Why make a film whose form follows the emotional arc of a life? 

I wanted it to be an experience of life washing over you. I was also excited by the tools that I could use to achieve this — like sound. I have such respect for sound and all it can do. I worked with Miguel Calvo on the sound design for this film; we were very intentional about
how we used sound in different scenes. What’s the texture of rain in one scene versus another? How does the texture speak to the emotionality of what we’re going for? How do you use sound as an entry point to the interiority of these characters? 

What was the writing process like? 

The biggest thing I had to figure out was the format, how to get across the fluidness I was looking for. Once I figured out how the story would look on the page, it unlocked a lot for me and the script. I’m a very spare writer. The screenplay is only 60 pages. 

Did you always know you were going to be a director? 

No. My background is in poetry. I had always been interested in filmmaking, but I didn’t have the technical background, so it didn’t feel possible for me. But when I was about to graduate from The New School, it felt like a now-or-never moment. I wasn’t ready to enter the “real world,” so I sent out some applications, and that led me to NYU. I’m really grateful that I studied poetry first because that’s where I found my voice and what I’m interested in as a human and as a creator. My poetry is very image-based, and so it translates [to film]. Of course, there was a learning curve with filmmaking, but I find it very helpful that I studied poetry first. 

Who were your literary and cinematic influences? 

I love Lucille Clifton. Her poetry is so visceral and evocative. It really speaks to me. There’s actually a line from a Lucille Clifton poem that opens the script and sets the tone of the film. I love [poet] Sharon Olds and Carlos Reygadas’ sound design, and Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons for the texture of their films. There’s a shot in All Dirt Roads that is certainly in the lineage of Daughters of the Dust. I admire Terrence Malick and [photographer] Deana Lawson, too. Something that resonates with me is the details of Lawson’s work. I’m very detail-driven, and that really draws me in. 

Did your life experiences figure at all? 

It’s a fiction film, but there are certainly a lot of details that speak to an emotional truth. I grew up fishing on the Cumberland River in Tennessee and, for the longest time, I thought we’d shoot the film in Tennessee. But when we found Rose Hill Church in Mississippi, which is the setting of the wedding and funeral scenes, we built production around it. My mother is from Mississippi, and it was a nice gift in a way — in a film that deals so much with what’s passed from generation to generation — to have a conversation with my lineage. The title comes from a conversation I had with my grandma around the practice of eating clay dirt. It was for a poem that I wrote years before I came to the film, but I knew I wanted it to be the title before I wrote a word of the script. It’s a small thread but an important one. For me, it ties everything together. 

Can you say more about how the practice of eating clay dirt ties everything together? 

It speaks to everything. It speaks to these characters’ closeness to Earth. It speaks to the water, because folks who eat clay dirt usually do so after it rains, when the Earth smells so rich. It speaks to what’s passed down from generation to generation. My mom ate clay dirt in her youth, which was passed down from her mother. And it’s not just any dirt, it’s very specific. It’s a detail I was really intentional about getting right. 

You mentioned water, which figures pretty prominently in your two short films and in All Dirt Roads. Can you talk about your relationship to water and how you wanted it to show up in this film? 

I adore water. It holds so much. When thinking about a film that wants to be very fluid and speaks about life — and the changes of a person, and the relationships around her and her family — water, from the beginning, was always there. It holds life, death, all of it. I love thinking about the way water changes form, the way we, as people, change. I’m interested in the different ways it can present itself. 

How do you feel like you’ve grown as a filmmaker since your short films? 

Making films, and arguably making art in general, is an invitation to get to know yourself on a deeper level. I’ve grown in that regard, which informs everything. I know what my nonnegotiables are, too. Making a film like All Dirt Roads, you have to be unapologetic. I’m grateful for the amazing collaborators who were excited by the leaps that I and the film are asking them to make. 

Your film is bold, audacious and experimental. Can you talk about how you got the funding to do something so different from what we usually see in Hollywood?

My producer, Maria Altamirano, and I met in film school; we worked on Nettles together. She was on the project from its inception. When we were pitching, it became clear that the more we owned the film as director and producer, the more folks were interested in collaborating. I think being unapologetic about the film was key. Getting Pastel — Barry Jenkins’ company that he runs with Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak — was also key. Barry was the judge of the Black Filmmaker Residency for Screenwriting at Indie Memphis. I submitted the script for All Dirt Roads and was selected as the winner. Months later, we sent it to Pastel. It was clear they understood the risks the film was asking to take and understood me as a filmmaker. They were excited by that risk rather than afraid. It’s really about finding the right people. 

Do you know what’s next? 

I’m not saying too much about it, but I do know what’s next. It continues my interest in the body and nature. And you know, as All Dirt Roads continues to be brought into the world, it’s nice to start to water the soil of another project. 

This story first appeared in a November standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.