Julie Dash

Julie Dash is a film director, writer and producer. Her 1991 feature film Daughters of the Dust was the first full-length film directed by a black woman to obtain general theatrical release in the United States. That film is a fictionalized retelling of her father’s Gullah family who lived off the coast of the Southeastern U.S.

Daughters of the Dust is included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance. It was also named one of the most significant films of the last 30 years by IndieWire.

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.

Her television movies include Funny Valentines, Incognito, Love Song, and The Rosa Parks Story, 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.

Dash, who received her MFA in 1985 from the UCLA Film School, is one of the filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion Film Movement. The L.A. Rebellion refers to the black filmmakers that studied at the UCLA Film School from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Some of the other major figures of that movement include Charles Burnett, Larry Clark and Haile Gerima.