Filmmaker Julie Dash was born on October 22, 1952 in Queens, New York. She received her B.A. in film production from City College of New York in 1974 and went on to earn a two-year fellowship to the Center for Advanced Film Studies at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles.  At AFI, Dash studied under filmmaker Jan Kadar and produced Four Women, an experimental dance film that received the 1978 Gold Medal for Women in Film award at the Miami International Film Festival.  Dash continued her graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, where in 1977 she directed Diary of an African Nun, an adaptation of a short story by Alice Walker.  In 1985, she earned her M.F.A. in Film & Television production at UCLA.

In 1981, the Guggenheim Foundation awarded Dash a grant to research Gullah culture in the Sea Island communities of South Carolina and Georgia.  Part of her research was included in her 1991 independent film, Daughters of the Dust.  The groundbreaking Pan-African themed and female-centered film depicts a group of Gullah women celebrating their African ancestry.  Daughters of the Dust was the first nationally released feature-length film by an African-American woman and it won the best cinematography category at the Sundance Film Festival.  The Library of Congress placed the film on its National Film Registry, joining a distinguished group of films preserved as national treasures.

Following the success of Daughters of the Dust, Dash continued to direct and receive awards and honors for her film and television directing.  In 2007, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Images of Black Women Film Festival.  Her acclaimed cinematic productions include: Brothers of the Borderland, for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She also directed the CBS television movie, The Rosa Parks Story, featuring Angela Basset. The film received several awards, including the NAACP Image Award, the Family Television Award, and the New York