Women in Film & Video of Washington, D.C. (WIFV) announced that its 2017 Women of Vision Award recipient is Julie Dash. She will be honored on April 12 at Howard University with a reception, retrospective of her films and discussion. WUSA9 anchor and Howard alumna Lesli Foster will moderate.

WIFV’s annual Women of Vision Award, started in 1994, celebrates women’s creative and technical achievements in media and entertainment. Past recipients include Carrie Fisher, Penny Marshall, Rosemary Reed, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, Maureen Bunyan and Gwen Ifill. A complete list of past honorees is available here.

Dash is a filmmaker of theatrical and television movies, music videos and commercials. She is also an author, website creator, former Rockefeller Fellow and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her influential feature, Daughters of the Dust, (1991) was the first film by an African-American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the U.S. The film is set in 1902 and centers on the Gullah Geechee folks, descendants of enslaved West Africans now living on Sea Island, near South Carolina and Georgia. Will they stay on the island or move to the mainland, risking the loss of their customs and language? In 2004, the Library of Congress named this seminal work to the National Film Registry. Dash earned a MFA from UCLA in 1985 and is a frequent lecturer on college campuses. Dash is currently the Time-Warner Visiting Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

“It’s important to honor women like Julie Dash, who is more than deserving of her worldwide acclaim. Julie enriches our minds by telling untold stories in innovative and insightful ways,” said Yanick Rice Lamb, Chair of Dept. of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard, about Dash receiving the Women of Vision Award.

As part of the celebration, Lesli Foster, award-winning journalist, news anchor and Howard University graduate, will moderate. In 2001, she joined WUSA9, a CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C. Foster previously worked in the Baltimore and Michigan markets. So far, she has been nominated for nine Emmys and won the Emmy for Best News Anchor in the Washington market in 2012.

The event will be Wednesday, April 12, 6:00 pm reception, 7:00 pm program at Howard University, School of Social Work Auditorium, 601 Howard Place, NW Washington, D.C. 20059, (Shaw/Howard Metro). Tickets: WIFV Members $40/Students $25/General Public $60

For more, visit WWW.WIFV.org or @wifv_dc or call 202-429-9438.