Julie Dash

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.

Julie Ethel Dash (born October 22, 1952) is an American filmmaker, music video and commercial director, author, and website producer.

Dash was born on October 22, 1952, in Queens, New York to Rhudine Henderson and Charles Edward Dash.

She studied in 1969 at the Studio Museum of Harlem.

As an undergraduate, she studied psychology until she was accepted into the film school at the Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts at City Colleges of New York, CCNY.

She graduated from Jamaica High school then went on to receive a B.A. in film production from the City College of New York in 1974.

She was raised in the Queensbridge Housing Project in Long Island City, Queens.

In 1974, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Production.

As a student, Dash wrote the script for a documentary for the New York Urban Coalition, titled Working Models of Success.

After graduating from CCNY, she moved to Los Angeles for graduate studies.

She completed a two-year Conservatory Fellowship in Producing/Writing at AFI Conservatory.

There she studied under filmmakers, including Ján Kadár, William Friedkin, and Slavko Vorkapich.

She attended graduate school at the UCLA Film School and became one of a new generation of African and African-American filmmakers known as the "Black insurgents" or L.A. Rebellion.

She directed Working Models of Success (1976), and the next year, produced Four Women (1975), a short dance film based on a song by Nina Simone.

She directed the film Diary of an African Nun (1977).

Screened at the Los Angeles Film Exposition, it earned a Directors Guild Award for a Student Film.

It won a gold medal for Women in Film in the 1978 Miami International Film Festival.

As a graduate student at UCLA, she received an MFA in Film and Television Production.

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.

Dash has worked in television since the late 1990s.

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 general theatrical release in the United States.

Stemming from the film's success, Dash also released novels of the same title in 1992 and 1999.

Dash is also a member of the Directors Guild of America, as she has been a member since 1996.

Her television movies include Funny Valentines (1999), Incognito (1999), Love Song (2000), and The Rosa Parks Story (2002), starring Angela Bassett.

In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

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.

The film was later a key inspiration for Beyoncé's 2016 album Lemonade.

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.

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".