Post #5: Julie Dash

Julie Dash is an American film director, writer and producer. She is known her film 1991 Daughters of the Dust which she wrote, directed and produced herself. It was the first full length film by an African-American woman to gain a general theatrical release. The story is about three generations of Gullah Geechee women as they prepare to migrate to the North on the mainland. It was selected for the 1991 Sundance dramatic competition. Dash wrote two books about Daughters of the Dust. The first book is co-authored along with Toni Cade Bambara and bell hooks, about the details in making the film and the other book is a novel that is set 20 years after the film’s story. The film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Her work with Daughters of the Dust is significant because she avoided the European way of storytelling and created a new structure called the “Grio” structure influenced by the African Grio people who have the special ability to recall an entire family’s history in a number of days. The storytelling is completely different from the traditional European style, which most people are familiar with “Once Upon A Time”.

Dash’s work is important because it combats the single story and focuses on informing people about history and stories about women that are not normally highlighted or given attention. As mentioned in The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship reading, Dash said, “I make films because I was such a spectator!” (bell hooks, 126) Black Female Spectatorship has to do with not seeing yourself accurately represented in media and instead having to resort to viewing without engagement which is why Dash watched mainstream movies repeatedly for the pleasure of deconstructing them and with the goal of shifting the dynamic. Thankfully, her pleasure of deconstructing these films led to her creation of films that allowed black women to no longer have to feel excluded from film. According to hooks, she creates “a filmic narrative wherein the black female protagonist subversively claims that space. Inverting the “real-life” power structure, she offers the black female spectator representations that challenge stereotypical notions that place us outside the realm of filmic discursive practices.” (129) Dash’s catalog also includes The Rosa Parks Story which she directed, starring Angela Bassett, Diary of an African Nun, and she currently serves as one of the directors of Queen Sugar. Her dedication to representing the multidimensional of women is due to growing up and seeing the danger of the single story. Her feminist work seeks to dismantle that. Without Julie Dash we wouldn’t have Beyonce’s Lemonade visuals which were inspired by Daughters of the Dust.

The Rosa Parks Story - directed by Julie Dash

Audre Lorde’s discussion of transforming silence into language is one that Dash would agree with as she stands her ground on male dominated sets because she understands that remaining silent takes away the ability to tell your story and become a subject of the male gaze. “Where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. (Lorde, 42)” Julie Dash makes sure to encourage women to become more involved in media and to tell our stories: “We have a lifetime of stories of to tell… We need more people telling our stories and telling them the way they ought to be told.”

Julie Dash is truly a pioneer as she’s broke down barriers for women to be included in film. Her work is critically acclaimed and has inspired women like Ava DuVernay and Beyonce. When I was younger I saw the Rosa Parks Story and had no idea that she was behind it. It’s even more cool to know that such an important story was able to be told by a fellow black woman.

Works Cited
Bastien, Angelica Jade. We Have A Lifetime of Stories to Tell: Julie Dash On “Daughters of the Dust”. https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/we-have-a-lifetime-of-stories-to-tell-julie-dash-on-daughters-of-the-dust
Bell hooks “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship”
Julie Dash Biography http://juliedash.tv/biography/
Lorde, Audre. The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action