Julie Dash

Julie Dash is a Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Fulbright Scholar who earned a BA in Film Studies from the City University of New York, an M.F.A in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies, and an M.F.A at UCLA. Julie Dash is the Diana King Endowed Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College.

She is a member of the Directors Guild of American and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science.

Julie Dash is a pioneering filmmaker who broke racial and gender barriers with her 1991 Sundance Award–winning film Daughters of the Dust (Best Cinematography). With its wide theatrical release, Dash became the first African American woman to direct a feature-length film distributed nationally in U.S. theaters. She is internationally recognized for her visually poetic investigations of racial justice, diasporic identity, migration, and the interior lives of Black women across film, television, and museum installations. Dash has traveled extensively, presenting her work at film festivals throughout North America, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Africa, and Asia, and has served as a juror for international film festivals in India, Germany, and Portugal.

Film, Video & Television

The Library of Congress has placed both Daughters of the Dust and Dash’s UCLA MFA thesis film Illusions in the National Film Registry, recognizing them as American films of enduring cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. In a recent international critics’ poll conducted by the British Film Institute, Daughters of the Dust was ranked #60 among the 100 Greatest Films.

Dash has written and directed for major networks and platforms including CBS, BET, STARZ, Showtime, MTV Movies, HBO, Disney/Hulu, and OWN Television. She hosted The Golden Years, a series for Turner Classic Movies. Her narrative films include the NAACP Image Award–winning and Emmy- and DGA-nominated The Rosa Parks Story, as well as Incognito, Funny Valentines, Love Song, and Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground.

Her television episodic directing credits include Reasonable Doubt (Seasons 1 and 2) for Disney+/Hulu, the ABC limited series Women of the Movement, Our Kind of People for FOX/Hulu, and Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar for OWN. Dash has also produced and directed projects for museum and themed entertainment contexts, including collaborations with Disney Imagineering.

She directed Brothers of the Borderland for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum and Smuggling Daydreams into Reality for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Her recent museum installations include Standing at the Scratch Line at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Shine a Light, a large-scale video-mapping projection for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Dash also produced and directed a promotional fashion film for Vogue featuring Chloë x Halle.

Dash has several documentary projects in development, including Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, a feature-length documentary about Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor—renowned author, performer, cultural historian, and chef from rural South Carolina.

Museum & Cultural Work

Dash’s museum and immersive media work began with Disney Imagineering and has expanded to major cultural institutions nationwide. Her most recent work includes Homegoing, a short film featuring the bass-baritone, Davone Tines, in remembrance of the Emmanuel Nine, for the Geffen MOCA. Her 2023 film, Seeking: Mapping Our Gullah Geechee Story, which she wrote and directed as the centering film for the opening of the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Created on the historic site of Gadsden’s Wharf, the film anchors the museum’s narrative on African American origins, memory, and continuity.

In recognition of her lifelong commitment to preserving and illuminating African American history and Gullah Geechee culture, Dash was awarded President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Honors & Education

Julie Dash is a Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and Fulbright Fellow. She earned a B.A. in Film Studies from the City University of New York, an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies, and an M.F.A. from UCLA.

She is the Diana King Endowed Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College and is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.