Julie Dash Biography

Independent filmmaker Julie Dash is probably best known for her ground-breaking, 34-minute film Illusions, which tells the story of two Black women with disparate jobs in the Hollywood film industry in the '40s. Dash studied film at the American Film Institute and attended the UCLA film school in the '70s where she became known as one of what critic Clyde Talor called the 'LA Rebellion' in Black Cinema; all of Dash's films center around the self-image and definition of black women. In 1991 she released a full-length feature film, Daughters of the Dust, that tells the tale of a Gullah family living on an island off the Southern coast in the early 1900s. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi