Brooklyn, NY - African Voices magazine and Long Island University´s Media Arts Department (LIU) announce the 9th Annual Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series will take place March 10-12, 2006 at the Brooklyn Campus of LIU´s newly renovated Kumble Theater (located at corner of DeKalb and Flatbush Avenues). This year´s festival theme Jump at de Sun: Exploring Zora Neale Hurston's Reel Life will celebrate the work of Zora Neale Hurston as an inspiration for women filmmakers.

Award-winning filmmaker Julie Dash, director of "Daughters of the Dust," will be honored with the Reel Sisters Pioneer Award at the opening night gala on March 10, 2006 at 6:30 pm. There, exclusive footage from writer/producer Kristy Andersen´s "Black South: The Life Journey of Zora Neale Hurston," a new documentary about Zora´s life, will be shown. For more information or tickets, please visit www.reelsisters.org or call 718.488.1052 or 212.865.2982. Advance ticket sales for groups and organizations are welcomed.

Reel Sisters is a Brooklyn-based film festival co-founded by African Voices magazine and Long Island University´s Media Arts Department. Since 1997, it has provided opportunities for women of color filmmakers to showcase their work. Reel Sisters has screened more than 200 films by independent women filmmakers from across the globe. Film enthusiasts attending the festival have a chance to see some of the latest work by women filmmakers from around the world.

Recently, Reel Sisters was listed in Chris Gore´s "Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide" as one of the best festivals for Women and best Black Film Festivals. Reel Sisters is one of the first festivals to stimulate an international dialogue on improving the status of female directors, producers and screenwriters in Hollywood. It is a launching pad for independent women directors to gain international exposure and recognition. Monikka Stallworth, a recipient of the Reel Sisters 2003 Best Director Award, went on to have her film Mello´s Kaleidoscope featured in Robert DeNiro´s second annual Tribeca Film Festival and aired on NBC's Black Filmmakers showcase. She is one of many talented women directors to have her work screened in larger venues or secured distribution deals after screening her work in Reel Sisters.


About the Honoree

Reel Sisters 2006 will celebrate Julie Dash for her groundbreaking cinematic contributions as an artist and storyteller. With the debut of "Daughters of the Dust" in January 1992, Ms. Dash became the first African American woman to have a full-length general theatrical release. Archived in New York at the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture, "Daughters of the Dust" was named as one of the 50 most important independent films ever made in Black Cinema in the 20th century by Filmmaker's Magazine.

Her critically acclaimed short film "Illusions," a drama set in Hollywood 1942, won the Black Filmmakers Foundation´s 1989 Jury Prize for Best Film of the Decade. "Illusions" showed the power, beauty, and depth of her filmmaking style long before "Daughters" put her on the map as a visual storyteller.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Dash has toured nationally and internationally with her work and she has received numerous awards since embarking on her film career. She directed the 2003 NAACP Image Award-winning "The Rosa Parks Story," starring Angela Bassett (who received an Emmy nomination for her performance).

Ms. Dash also directed the first BET/ENCORE/StarZ3 original feature length production "Funny Valentines," starring Alfre Woodard, Loretta Devine and C.C.H. Pounder. She wrote and directed an episode of "Women" for Showtime Cable Television, as well as segment of HBO's "Subway Stories."

Most recently, Ms. Dash directed a short film for The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum in Ohio. The high-definition production of "Brothers of the Borderland" is a total sensory experience that will play every twenty minutes in the theater during museum hours for the next four years.

"Reel Sisters is honored and privileged to present our Pioneer Award to Julie - she brings generations of women together in her films and she´s very much like Zora Neale Hurston who was a visual storyteller and documentarian concerned with preserving our history and culture," said African Voices magazine publisher Carolyn A. Butts. "Julie is a phenomenal artist who experiments with boundaries and explores the unknown in her work. We know Julie will continue to keep our stories alive in film and literature. She has given a voice to all of the women filmmakers who dare to tell the truth in their work."

Reel Sisters is sponsored by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts. For the program of events and new developments, please regularly visit www.reelsisters.org or call 718.488.1052 or 212.865.2982. Please direct media inquiries to Ms. Anne Lloyd at 212.865.2982.