film Q&As
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JulieDashInterview.pptxJulie Dash Interview
“I Do Exist”: From “Black Insurgent” to Negotiating with the Hollywood Divide – A Conversation with Julie Dash by Michael Martin
Julie Dash Interview
Through this interview, we learn biographical details about Julie Dash. She was born and raised in the Queensbridge Projects in Long Island City, NY. From the Mark Anthony Neal interview, we discover that the singers Nas and the real Roxanne were also raised in Queensbridge.
Dash’s parents are from South Carolina and her father and his family practiced Gullah traditions.
She attends a film workshop at “the Studio Museum in Harlem.” She obtains a “BA in film production at the City College in New York.” (1)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash moves to Los Angeles wanting to attend UCLA but she did not have a letter of recommendation. She becomes a “producing and writing fellow at the American Film Institute.” (2)
While attending UCLA, she works with Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Halie Gerima, Alile Sharon Larkin, Carroll Parrott Blue, Barbara McCullough, and Melvonna Ballenger.
Those Dash worked with have been called the “black insurgents,” “the Los Angeles School or LA Rebellion.” (2)
Julie Dash Interview
These students “engaged in interrogating conventions of dominant cinema, screening films of socially conscious cinema, and discussing ways to alter previous significations as they relate to Black people.” (2)
In this interview, Dash comments that she wants to re-define the way we see African American women on screen.
Julie Dash Interview
The group “engaged and were inspired by the writings of Third World theorists, the cultural texts and practices of the Black Arts Movement, and the anticolonial and postrevolutionary films and political tracts of the New Latin American Cinema Movement.”(2)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash is part of the second wave of the LA Rebellion.
Diary of an African Nun (1977) won a Director’s Guild of America Award
Illusions (1982) receives a Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award
Daughters of the Dust (1992) is the first feature film directed by an “African American woman to have a national theatrical release.” (3)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash works on television and video projects after Daughters. She observes that Hollywood “is still not quite open to what I have to offer.” She joins The Rosa Parks Story (2002) because Angela Bassett, the star and executive producer, requests her. Alfre Woodard star and executive producer of Funny Valentine (1998) also requests Dash.
Dash mentions that without those requests, she probably would not have been chosen for those projects.
Julie Dash Interview
She also delineates how Hollywood dismisses her. One producer tells her not to replicated Daughters of the Dust and an executive says “I’ve seen your movie – Daughters of the Dust. Let’s not even talk about it, let’s move on from here.” (4)
In light of these challenges, Martin asks her if she has had to compromise her “vision and artistry.” Dash responds, “I will always maintain the integrity of the subject matter whatever I am doing.” (4)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash discusses potential projects and then asks important questions about Black film at the time of the interview, 2006. Black romantic comedies were popular yet “who is deciding on which films will be made and which will not? What kinds of films are being made and why? Who is the audience? Are we just performing for white audiences? Are we being funny, are we dancing, are we singing, or are we now the love interest?” (5)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash comments that studios in Hollywood “claim the demographics show that they cannot afford to do films with a female lead.” (6) Remember she made this comment in October 2006. Studios are finally realizing this is a false claim.
She also believes that people in development “have a very myopic view of who we (Black people) are and what we are and what we want to do.” While continuing her discussion about how Daughters was received, she tells how people felt the film should have been a documentary or claims that there was no script for the film. (6)
Julie Dash Interview
She states that a foreign distributor felt that Daughters “wasn’t an authentic African American film. It wasn’t, like, from the hood, which is interesting to me, having grown up in the hood. Ironically, those filmmakers who make the ‘hood’ films haven’t necessarily grown up in the hood. It’s exotica to them.” She hopes when people review this period of time, they will realize hood films weren’t culturally representative of African American people. (7)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash prefers fiction films to documentary because of her mother. In her films, “the narrative depends on the story. The story tells me how I’m going to tell it, what it’s going to be.” (8)
She believes her films have a specific aesthetic. It’s a combination of her own style along with a Black aesthetic and a woman’s aesthetic.
Julie Dash Interview
Dash states that one of the reasons she choose UCLA was to work with Larry Clark, Halle Gerima, and Charles Burnett. She also has worked with St. Clair Bourne [he created documentaries on Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson] and Kathleen Collins (editing and filmmaking). Writers Toni Cade Bambara and Toni Morrison have also influenced her work.
She is disappointed with films that portray African Americans as victims or “reacting to external forces” or “testosterone films.” (10) She argues that we should be “dedicated with a concerted and focused effort to demand more balanced images of ourselves.” (11)
Julie Dash Interview
Dash posits that a “signature film is like an auteur film. It implies the director had control over everything. However, filmmaking is a collaboration, unless the film is some of kind of surveillance with one camera.” (12) Yet she believes she has a signature in her films.
Julie Dash Interview
Dash views authenticity films that “you can feel that it comes out of the filmmaker, out of the community, out of the issues, out of the events, out of history.”
She also believes that filmmakers do not have to take the approach to film as either commerce or art; “we can have both.” (13)
For Black filmmaking in the 1970s, the East Coast was known for documentaries and the West Coast, narrative film.
Julie Dash Interview
Dash perceives what happened with Black filmmakers in the 1990s was competition created by the industry. People ignored her [“Well, they didn’t know where you were.”] and didn’t want her to interact with others like Matty Rich.
The industry tries to push just one person of color – Spike, Tyler, Ryan, etc.
