Julie Dash launched her career with the widely acclaimed “Daughters of the Dust” in 1991 and has only made one movie since. Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” made a huge splash in 1978, but he has struggled to complete a handful of features since then.
Dash’s lyrical fable and Burnett’s tough-minded drama are nothing alike, but they do have one thing in common: Both overlooked filmmakers are Black.
Even getting their debut features into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, which lists just 775 movies of historic and artistic importance, hasn’t made it easier for those two in Hollywood, and they’re not alone. Only in the past few years have directors such as Regina King (“One Night in Miami,” in theaters and streaming now); Barry Jenkins (the Oscar-winning “Moonlight”); Jordan Peele (“Get Out”); and others begun to chip away at inequities demonstrated by a 2019 study that found that only 6% of the movies in the previous 12 years were directed by Black artists. (Sixteen of 2018’s top 100 films were made by Black directors, a high-water mark that doubled the previous peak.)
Recent Comments