
Julie Dash
Directing
Biography
Julie Ethel Dash (born October 22, 1952) is an American film director, writer and 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. After she 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. Daughters of the Dust 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), and 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.
Known For

Two sisters, Nova Bordelon and Charley Bordelon, with her teenage son Micah moves to the heart of Louisiana to claim an inheritance from her recently departed father - an 800-acre sugarcane farm.
Queen Sugar

The epic story of the actors, writers, directors, and producers who fought for their place on the page, behind the camera and on the screen. From blackface to Black Panther, this series is a definitive chronicle of more than a century of the black experience in Hollywood and a powerful reexamination of a quintessentially American story – in brilliant color.
Hollywood Black

Women: Stories of Passion is a dramatic series that aired on the American cable television network Showtime and distributed by Playboy Entertainment overseas. The episodes were based on stories of love, and passion from a woman's point of view.
Women: Stories of Passion

Wanda Sykes returns to her alma mater with a fearlessly funny takedown of everything from the state of the world to the cultural clash over washcloths.
Wanda Sykes: Legacy

An anthology of 10 stories depicting real-life incidents of subway riders in New York City, which range from compassion and love to violence and loss.
Subway Stories

An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.
This Changes Everything

Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.
These Amazing Shadows

In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.
Daughters of the Dust

Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Rosa Parks Story

A privileged, black college student with a fiance falls in love with a white musician she meets on her 21st birthday.
Love Song

A woman returns to her home town to sort out her troubled marriage and finds new happiness in the rekindling of a broken friendship with her cousin.
Funny Valentines

An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone explores four common stereotypes of Black women.
Four Women

A young socialite hires a bodyguard to protect her when an ex-convict begins stalking her.
Incognito

An African nun is consumed by fear and doubt about her decision to take the solemn vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Her anguish intensifies night after night as she lies on a hard bed in her small room at the convent and listens to the rhythmic, beckoning drums of her village.
Diary of an African Nun

“Draw or Die” is the divine imperative received by the painter, Hannah, who is being nurtured by her Grandmother, but controlled by her pragmatic mother. When her Granny spirit shouts this command to Hannah, she closes a celebration of personal visions in a dance piece that is close to visionary in itself.
Praise House

A young African-American man, living in Los Angeles without direction in his life, reluctantly agrees to be the best man for his brother, an upwardly mobile lawyer.
My Brother's Wedding
Explores the careers of twenty black women working as film directors.
Sisters in Cinema

A woman in a Hollywood dubbing studio struggles with race and preconceptions. The short film depicts the life of an African American woman passing as a white woman working in the film industry during the 1940s. It calls attention to the lack of African Americans in the film industry during that era.
Illusions
A feature length documentary about Vertamae Smart Grosvenor, a world-renowned author, performer, and chef from rural South Carolina who has led a remarkably unique and complex life.