Director Spotlight: JULIE DASH

Had already seen: two episodes of Queen Sugar,

Watched for this: Daughters of the Dust (1991), The Rosa Parks Story (2002),  "Give Me One Reason" (Tracy Chapman video short, 1996), Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground - Sax Cantor Riff (1997), Illusions (short) (1982), Incognito (1999), Love Song (2000), Funny Valentines (1999)

Have not seen: Working Models of Success (1973), Four Women (Short) (1975), Diary of an African Nun (Short) (1977), Praise House (1991), Women: Stories of Passion - Season 2, episode 5 "Grip Till It Hurts" (1997), Brothers of the Borderland (short) (2004), Standing at the Scratch Line (short) (2016), Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (2017)

It is for Julie Dash that I am most glad that I expanded my watch list. 

Initially I only intended to watch Daughters of the Dust and The Rosa Parks Story. I wrote about Daughters of the Dust being gratuitously beautiful, and there were many ways in which it kept coming back to me. It is a classic for a reason.

I did not like The Rosa Parks Story. 

There is an episode of black~ish where the Johnsons go to the movies on Christmas. They were going to watch a new action picture that sounded a lot like Captain Marvel, but conscience struck Dre and he made them go see a movie based on Rosa Parks. Everyone keeps trying to sneak out because they are so bored by this ridiculously slow and overacted but still not fun movie. 

I could not help but wonder if they had The Rosa Parks Story in mind. 

Even finding it boring and disagreeing with how they portrayed Parks (as a very shy and reluctant activist; maybe I'm wrong), I could still appreciate some nice touches to how the scenes were set and the aesthetics of the picture. 

Julie Dash has better movies. And worse ones, though not many.

I was only able to watch the three made-for-television movies because of a Youtube channel, Reelblack:

https://www.youtube.com/user/reelblack 

(If Reelblack can locate and post the movies and shorts I haven't seen, I will watch them all, even though my watching is technically over.)

I thought Incognito got pretty contrived at the climax, but that was based on a book that has a lot of fans, and probably needed to be that way. I had a hard time sticking with Funny Valentines, but a lot of reviewers loved it. Tastes differ, that's okay. I am still really glad that the movies were there, and that I had the chance to see them.

I liked Love Song a lot. That is largely for the music and the hard to resist charms of Christian Kane. In addition, as Camille (played by Monica) goes to reconcile with Billy (Christian Kane's character), there is this excellently shot sequence of her walking to him, picking her way through the normal garage detritus. She is wearing flowing pink crepe-y pants and a really cute pair of ball heeled shoes. It is not your most practical outfit for navigating a greasy garage, but visually it works so well. I have to love the artistry there.

What really sold me on Julie Dash was her use of different kinds of lighting for different projects.

Daughters of the Dust has a lot of light saturation, with powerful sunlight striking characters dressed in white on sand. It is a memorable look on its own, but the other two projects show the range.

"Give Me One Reason", a music video for Tracy Chapman, is set in a club. That is frequently a dark environment, and this seems like one, especially with the royal blue backdrop. And yet, with the use of focused overhead lighting (I assume), there is also a radiance throughout the set. 

Where I really started to appreciate it was on Illusions, a short film from 1982. 

Lonette McKee plays a light-skinned Black woman passing for white and working in the studio system. That is one illusion, but Hollywood is full of them, including having Black singers providing the voices of leading ladies. 

(So, in Singing in the Rain terms, Lana is not really singing, but her understudy looks nothing like Debbie Reynolds.) 

The plot and dialogue is solid anyway, but I was first impressed with how much it looked like it really could have been filmed during World War II. Accurately, those movies did not give any definition to Black features, which you see with a few performers, including the actual singing voice, Esther, played by Rosanne Katon. 

When McKee's character has an extended and important dialogue with Esther, the film used doesn't change, but Dash doesn't leave Esther to be nullified by the darkness either. She shoots them outdoors, with Katon in bright sunlight and McKee partially shaded. Both actresses are seen distinctly, it doesn't change the accuracy of the period representation, and it also works as a metaphor for the openness with which each character can engage with her race and identity.

With John Singleton we talked about how to engage with different levels of quality in terms of scripts and what the studio wants; most directors are probably going to have to work with a few clinkers, just to keep working. 

As wonderful as it is to watch a movie where all of the different parts are working together, sometimes you learn more from the movies that don't work as well. 

I have learned that Julie Dash really knows how to make movies. She films well.