Julie Dash will fight the power with an Angela… | Little White Lies

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Julie Dash will fight the pow­er with an Angela Davis biopic

28 Jan 2019

Words by Charles Bramesco

Woman with afro hairstyle speaking into microphone, surrounded by a large crowd, in front of a grand building.
Woman with afro hairstyle speaking into microphone, surrounded by a large crowd, in front of a grand building.
The civ­il rights leader will be the sub­ject of the director’s first nar­ra­tive fea­ture since 1991.

Julie Dash has spent the last two decades doing fine work on TV, in the mul­ti­me­dia art world, and in short films via her own online plat­form. But for the first time since 1991’s superla­tive Daugh­ters of the Dust, she’s mount­ing a new fea­ture for the­atri­cal distribution.

From on the scene at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, Shad­ow and Act reports that Dash has struck a deal to direct a biopic of civ­il rights leader and for­mer Black Pan­ther Angela Davis, who will also be involved per­son­al­ly with the production.

Lion­s­gate has thrown their con­sid­er­able weight behind the still-ges­tat­ing pro­duc­tion, bring­ing in buzz screen­writer Bri­an Tuck­er (cur­rent­ly hard at work on an Amer­i­can remake of Park Chan-wooks Sym­pa­thy for Mr Vengeance) to draw up a script. Dash also found a pro­duc­er in Sidra Smith, who also shep­herd­ed the doc­u­men­tary Free Angela and All Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, prim­ing her per­fect­ly for a dra­ma­tized treat­ment of the subject.

While the search for a star to por­tray the activist/​radical/​prisoner/​professor/​communist/​cultural icon con­tin­ues – and maybe this is just the mem­o­ry of BlacK­kKlans­man talk­ing, but what’s Lau­ra Har­ri­er up to? – Dash intends on begin­ning prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy in June.

It’s an ide­al match­ing of artist and top­ic, with one defi­ant pil­lar of black wom­an­hood pay­ing trib­ute to anoth­er. File this one under to keep an eye on in 2020’.

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