Meet Julie Dash, MFA

Biography

Faculty Member Since 2017

Julie Dash, MFA (American Film Institute), MFA (UCLA), Diana King Endowed Professor in the Department of Film, Filmmaking, Television and Related Media. Dash is also the founder of the Spelman drone pilot workshop for visual thinkers.

Thirty-four years ago, Dash broke racial and gender boundaries with her Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography), Daughters of the Dust. She became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film. The Library of Congress placed Daughters of the Dust and her UCLA MFA senior thesis, "Illusions," in the National Film Registry. These two films join a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress. Julie Dash is known for her visual investigations of issues of racial justice, diasporic identities, migration, and Black women across films, videos, and museum installations. 

In 2004, the Library of Congress placed "Daughters of the Dust" in the National Film Registry, where it joins a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress. Dash is the only African-American woman to have a feature film inducted into the National Film Registry.

Dash is the recent recipient of numerous awards, including the New York Film Critics Special Award, the 2017 Robert Smalls Merit and Achievement Award, and the Visionary Award from Women in Film, Washington DC. She served as the 2017 Time Warner Visiting Professor at Howard University and as a Distinguished Professor of Cinema, Television and Emerging Media (CTEMS) at Morehouse College (2015-2017).

Dash recently directed multiple episodes of Season 2 of the award-winning dramatic series "Queen Sugar," created and produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey for OWN Television.

She participated in the Trailblazing Women franchise on Turner Classic Movies and later became a visiting host on TCM. Dash, who has written and directed for CBS, BET, ENCORE STARZ, SHOWTIME, MTV Movies and HBO, directed "The Rosa Parks Story," "Incognito," "Funny Valentines," "Love Song," and "Subway Stories: Tales From The Underground." These works have been recipients of the NAACP Image Award and have been nominated for an Emmy and the Directors Guild of America Award.

Her work as a film director includes museum and theme park exhibits and design for Disney’s Imagineering, "Brothers of the Borderland" for The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum, "Smuggling Daydreams Into Reality" for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the upcoming 2017 work, "Standing at The Scratch Line," for the Philadelphia Museum of African American History.

Her work also includes music videos, documentaries, PSA’s, industrial documentary films, and commercial spots for Fortune 500 brands, including Coca-Cola and General Motors Corporation.

Dash published a novel by Dutton Books and "The Making of Daughters of the Dust, published by The New Press. Recent retrospectives of her narrative film work have been held in Sweden, Beijing and Hong Kong University, China; Charleston, South Carolina, Creteil, France; Taipei, Taiwan; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She also served as chair of the International Jury at the Kerala International Film Festival in India.

She is currently in production on a feature-length documentary about Vertamae Smart Grosvenor, a world-renowned author, performer and chef from rural South Carolina who led a remarkably unique and complex life. The film is based upon Grosvenor’s bestselling work, "Vibration Cooking: or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl." 

Professor Julie Dash attended Kerry James Marshall: Conversations on November 13 and 14, 2025, at the Royal Academy of Arts, where she contributed to discussions about the influences and histories that inform Marshall’s groundbreaking work, including a focused conversation on the role of film in her own career.

Related Links

• JulieDash.com
• VIMEO
• Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com)
  
• Daughters of the Dust (2K Restoration) | Official US Trailer (youtube.com)
• The Drone’s Eye View: Neema Griffin, C’2023, and Black History in Motion
• Spelman’s Julie Dash Directs Wanda Sykes’ Netflix Special

Education

• MFA: Film/Television Production, UCLA
• MFA: Producing/Writing For Film and Television, American Film Institute
• B.A.: Film/Television Production, City College Of New York 

Courses Taught

• SAVC 205 Digital Media Production I, Documentary Majors
• SAVC 206 Digital Media Production II, Documentary Majors
• SAVC 285 Hollywood & Histories, Lecture
• SAVC 493K Senior Thesis Independent Study, Documentary Majors
• SAVC 495 Senior Thesis, Documentary Majors

Research Interests

Film and Video Production
Curatorial Media Design for Museums

Select Films & Videos Directed + Museum Design

Press Release 

• Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (2025-in-progress)
• HomeGoing, film tribute to Emmanuel 9 for Los Angeles MOCA Museum, (2025)
• Reasonable Doubt, Season 1. (2022)
• Reasonable Doubt, Season 2. (2024)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, Designed two rooms for the American Collection (2023)
• Seeking: Mapping Our Gullah Geechee Story, IAAM Charleston, SC. (2023)
• Women of the Movement, (2022)
• Our Kind of People, (2021)
• Chole x Halle for VOGUE (Nigerian Folktale) (2021)
• Queen Sugar (2017)
• Standing At The Scratch Line (2016) Philadelphia African American Museum
• Brothers of The Borderland, (2004) Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum
• The Rosa Parks Story, (2002) CBS Television Movie
• Love Song, MTV (2000) Movie
• Incognito BET Arabesque Movie (1999) Movie
• Funny Valentines, Universal Movie (999) Movie
• Subway Stories: Tales From The Underground (1997) HBO
• Disney’s Imagineering Theme Park Design for African American Pavilion (1993)