Julie Dash

Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.

An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.

6.6/10
8.7%

A feature length documentary about Vertamae Smart Grosvenor, a world-renowned author, performer, and chef from rural South Carolina who has led a remarkably unique and complex life.

Recounts the impact of migrants on the African Methodist Episcopal church. Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel AME, the nation’s oldest African-American church, served as a local community partner, as well as Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, SC, the site of the 2015 mass shooting.

Two sisters, Nova Bordelon and Charley Bordelon, with her teenage son Micah moves to the heart of Louisiana to claim an inheritance from her recently departed father - an 800-acre sugarcane farm.

7.8/10

Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.

7.6/10
7.5%

Explores the careers of twenty black women working as film directors.

6.3/10

The story of the civil rights heroine whose refusal to obey racial bus segregation was just one of her acts in her fight for justice.

7.4/10

A privileged, black college student with a fiance falls in love with a white musician she meets on her 21st birthday.

6.8/10

A woman returns to her home town to sort out her troubled marriage and finds new happiness in the rekindling of a broken friendship with her cousin.

7.3/10

A rape victim continues to be stalked by the man who attacked her. Her fiancé is no help, so her father hires a bodyguard to protect her.

7.8/10

The actual experiences of New York City subway riders are dramatized in a collection of 10 intriguing and very different vignettes. The tales showcase an ensemble of familiar faces, and range from stories of compassion and love to reflections on violence and loss. Among them: a disabled beggar quarrels with a woman and ruins her shoes with his wheelchair, provoking onlookers to wrath and pity; a skittish tourist proves to be her own worst enemy; a newlywed trysts with a mysterious sexpot; a commuter helplessly witnesses a suicide attempt; and, in the most affecting segment, a young woman grieves over her mother's imminent death.

6.5/10

Women: Stories of Passion is a dramatic series that aired on the American cable television network Showtime and distributed by Playboy Entertainment overseas. The episodes were based on stories of love, and passion from a woman's point of view.

6.2/10

Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America.

6.5/10
9.8%

“Draw or Die” is the divine imperative received by the painter, Hannah, who is being nurtured by her Grandmother, but controlled by her pragmatic mother. When her Granny spirit shouts this command to Hannah, she closes a celebration of personal visions in a dance piece that is close to visionary in itself.

Ishmael Huston-Jones physically carries his mother, Pauline Jones, into the improvisational dance space. While she dyes eggs and speaks about family history, he improvises a rhythmic dance-counterpoint to her speech.

5.8/10
3.8%

A woman in a Hollywood dubbing studio struggles with race and preconceptions.

6.6/10

An African nun is consumed by fear and doubt about her decision to take the solemn vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Her anguish intensifies night after night as she lies on a hard bed in her small room at the convent and listens to the rhythmic, beckoning drums of her village.

7.6/10

Set to Nina Simone’s stirring ballad of the same name, Julie Dash’s dance film features Linda Martina Young as strong “Aunt Sarah,” tragic mulatto “Saffronia,” sensuous “Sweet Thing” and militant “Peaches.” Kinetic camerawork and editing, richly colored lighting, and meticulous costume, makeup and hair design work together with Young’s sensitive performance to examine longstanding Black female stereotypes from oblique, critical angles. (Jacqueline Stewart)

6.2/10