Julie Dash will discuss the arc of her filmmaking practice in an AIR keynote at Aspen Meadows’ Paepcke Auditorium on July 30, joining curator Hamza Walker in conversation as part of the Aspen Art Museum’s 2026 AIR Festival. The talk is presented as a Bluhm-Kaul Keynote and is associated with Aspen Film. According to the festival materials, the event begins at noon and takes place at Aspen Meadows, Paepcke Auditorium, in Aspen, Colorado.
Dash’s keynote is framed around two films that mark different points in her career. The first is 'Daughters of the Dust' (1991), described by AIR as her groundbreaking feature set in 1902 among Gullah communities on the Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. The festival text notes that it was the first feature by an African-American woman to receive a wide theatrical release in the United States and that it won the Sundance Award for Best Cinematography. AIR also identifies the film as a touchstone for its lyrical, nonlinear storytelling and its engagement with migration and cultural inheritance.
The second work cited in the keynote description is Dash’s recent short 'HOMEGOING' (2025), described as a “collaborative musical tribute” with opera singer Davoné Tines that commemorates the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. AIR says the keynote will revisit 'Daughters of the Dust' alongside this newer film, linking Dash’s long-standing concerns with Black life, memory, and place to a contemporary act of remembrance.
The festival description places Dash within the broader history of the L.A. Rebellion, the generation of filmmakers who sought to reimagine Black cinema outside dominant industry frameworks. AIR says her work is marked by layered sound, nonlinear editing, and composed tableaux, with landscapes playing an active role in the stories she tells. The keynote text also characterizes Dash’s practice as one that moves across film, television, video, museum installations, and public history projects, with a particular focus on racial justice, diasporic identity, migration, and the lives of Black women.
Walker, who is identified in the materials as the executive director of The Brick in Los Angeles, will moderate the conversation. AIR notes that his curatorial work includes 'MONUMENTS' (2025), a major exhibition at The Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where 'HOMEGOING' was recently on view. The pairing brings Dash’s cinematic work into dialogue with Walker’s curatorial perspective and the exhibition context in which the newer film has already been shown.
The keynote is one of several public programs in AIR 2026, which runs July 27–31. Festival materials also specify practical details for the Dash event, including shuttle service from the Aspen Art Museum to Aspen Meadows between 11 a.m. and noon and accessibility information for the Aspen Institute campus. The event is listed as registration required, with attendance managed through AIR’s booking system at Paepcke Auditorium on July 30.
