Julie Ethel Dash
(October 22, 1952)
The first Black student who studied film at UCLA.
Her 1991 feature Daughters of the Dust became the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to obtain a general theatrical release in the United States. In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Stemming from the film’s success.
She is an American filmmaker, music video, and commercial director, author, and website producer. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion. The L.A. Rebellion refers to the first African and African-American students who studied film at UCLA. Through their collective efforts, they sought to put an end to the prejudices of Hollywood by creating experimental and unconventional films. The main goal of these films was to create original Black stories and bring them to the main screens. After Dash had written and directed several shorts, her 1991 feature Daughters of the Dust became the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to obtain a general theatrical release in the United States. In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Stemming from the film’s success, Dash also released novels of the same title in 1992 and 1999. This film even inspired Beyoncé, arguably the music industry’s most influential artist, with her 2016 album titled Lemonade.
Daughters of the Dust is a fictionalized telling of her father’s Gullah family who lived off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia in 1902. Maintaining their strong ties to African culture, traditions, and language, the Peazant family ponders the meaning of their planned migration to the U.S. mainland. The film features black women’s stories, striking visuals shot on location, and a non-linear narrative. It is included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.” Dash has written two books on Daughters of the Dust—a “making of” history co-written with Toni Cade Bambara and bell hooks, and a sequel, set 20 years after the film’s story. Daughters of the Dust continues to have a widespread cultural impact today, as it was named one of the most significant films of the last 30 years, by IndieWire.
Dash has worked in television since the late 1990s. Her television movies include:
Funny Valentines (1999)
Incognito (1999)
Love Song (2000)
The Rosa Parks Story (2002), starring Angela Bassett. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center commissioned Dash to direct Brothers of the Borderland in 2004, as an immersive film exhibit narrated by Oprah Winfrey following the path of women gaining freedom on the Underground Railroad. In 2017, Dash directed episodes of Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Continuing her work in television, Dash has directed episodes of several TV series, namely Our Kind of People, Women of the Movement, and Reasonable Doubt, throughout 2021 and 2022.
At the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, it was announced Dash’s next major project will be a biopic of civil rights activist Angela Davis, to be produced by Lionsgate.
Currently as of 2023, along with working in television, Dash has become a Diana King Endowed Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College. At Spelman College, Dash is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture where she is assisting to create a documentary filmmaking major.[6] Dash has expressed that she is able to use her “mechanical imagination” in her classes, by focusing on aspects of film like frame composition and lighting. Using editing software like Premiere Pro in classes, she said in an interview that she does “miss having filmstrips around her neck”.
Dash is also a member of the Directors Guild of America, as she has been a member since 1996