Early Life
Julie Dash was born on October 22, 1952 in Queens, New York. Her father, a Gullah from the Sea Islands of Georgia, raised her. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dash said that she knew little about her Sea Island heritage until she noticed her father's "funny accent." She learned years later that it was Gullah, a West African-influenced English creole used and preserved by people on the islands and in the Low Country of Georgia, South Carolina, and northeastern Florida, together with a particular culture. As a child she noted certain rituals by her nanny, a Gullah woman; for instance, the woman would burn strands of Dash's hair that came loose after combing, rather than throwing them in a wastebasket. She told Dash this was "so no one could get a hold of it" and suggested "hiding pictures so no one could put gopher dust on them and drive you crazy.".
Dash began her study of film in 1969 at the Studio Museum of Harlem. As an undergraduate, she studied psychology until accepted into the film school at the Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts at CCNY. In 1974, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree. As a student, Dash wrote the script for a documentary for the New York Urban Coalition, entitled Working Models of Success.
After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles for graduate studies, attending the Center for Advanced Film Studies at the American Film Institute (AFI). There she studied under filmmakers including Jan Kadar, William Friedkin, and Slavko Vorkapich. She attended graduate school at the UCLA Film School, one of a new generation of African and African-American filmmakers who became known as the L.A. Rebellion.
She directed Working Models of Success (1976), and the next year, produced Four Women (1977), a short dance film based on a song by Nina Simone. It won a Gold Medal for Women in Film in the 1978 Miami International Film Festival. As a graduate student at UCLA, she received an MFA in Film and Television Production. She directed the film Diary of an African Nun (1977). Screened at the Los Angeles Film Exposition, it earned a Director's Guild Award for a Student Film.
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