Synopsis
A woman in a Hollywood dubbing studio struggles with race and preconceptions.
Illusions
1982 Directed by Julie Dash
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It seems too good to be true, a film that addresses directly erasure, sexism, white supremacy, and film. It feels like everything I've been saying for months is packed in less than 40 minutes of cinema. The central premise is wrapped around the multifaceted title, directly addressing the idea of films as illusions, as illusory depictions of history, as distortions of reality that serve as stronger dictionaries of reality than reality itself. From there, it illustrates the impact of how (or how not) African-Americans are depicted in film, showing the story of a singer who must sing to dub over a white woman's voice. If not for a solitary and anomalous advocate behind the scenes, she would not only be…
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Julie Dash's Illusions is a vital chapter in the history of female filmmaking and Black life on film. This 80's short looks like it jumped directly out of the 40s, and uses this disguise to make a superbly articulated point about who film represents and who film uses.
The realities of the 40s are used as a purposeful reflection of how backwards filmmaking was in the 80s, and still is. Our short is set in a studio, making it clear this is a film about filmmaking - and a commentary upon this. As it focuses on those behind the scenes, we are give an insight into what Dash thinks is the purpose of cinema - but also into how voices…
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The cinematic treatise that all filmmakers-of-color should be required to watch. Julie Dash's 1983 short-film investigates the illusory mythmaking of the Hollywood factory, as we follow a light-skinned black-female-executive and a dark-skinned black singer hired by the exec to dub a white star's voice. These two women deal consciously with Hollywood because, in the words of the exec, "people remember movies more than history, and I want to be a part of that history-making-process." Its didacticism will certainly come off as heavy-handed to some, but it is a necessary didacticism which illuminates just how crucial the institution of cinema really is. Illusions champions the unspoken, unseen, unheralded workers that make every frame of a film possible. Surprise, surprise: most of…
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Illusions addresses the misogyny and racism of a propagandized Hollywood of the 1940s, while also making an impactful statement about the status of the industry as a whole during The War, at the time this film was made and to this very day. Julie Dash is unafraid to call out the rampant falsities and illusionary presentation of Hollywood when the film was set. Arguably even more important however, is how her messaging here still resonates today. Even though I wasn’t quite as moved by this film as I was by Dash’s earlier, experimental-dance piece Four Women, this is most definitely required viewing for anyone who calls themselves a fan of cinema. There are some amateurish qualities to it, but this is easy…
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Yet another film from like ~40 years ago that would get flamed for being “too woke” if released today.
Julie Dash deserved a better career.
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Julie Dash's 32 minute portrait of sexist and racist attitudes in 1940s Hollywood, feels like current discussions of the filmmaking landscape. Crafted around forty years after the events it depicts, and sadly just as topically relevant almost forty years after its release. Right down to an opening pitch for John Woo's Windtalkers, Illusions is frustratingly ahead of its time. I was delighted to find this on criterion, though as its leaving at the end of May - you may have better luck with Kanopy.
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Pretty fucked up how a movie set in 1942 is still incredibly close to the reality of 2017
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Black Women Filmmakers Screening #3.1:
Floored!!! Julie Dash’s revolutionary, revisionist black feminist short feature Illusions is powerful and transportive and endlessly layered. I cannot believe this wasn’t actually shot in 1942. And Charles Burnett and Ahmed El Maânouni are attached? Insane.
We’re teleported to a Hollywood dubbing studio in the early years of WWII where Mignon Duprée, a light-skinned black woman, has worked up the chain, surviving by “passing” as white. Upon interacting with a black singer who dubs for white talent, she realizes the role she’s played.
The Classical Hollywood style of Illusions is packed with visual irony. Dash averts the white male gaze, empowers her protagonist, and scorches the un-democracy of the studio era through mise-en-scène alone.
Every…
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A masterful and deeply necessary movie about film—its history, its racism, its misogyny, its power in upholding these structures of oppression.
(It's on Kanopy btw, for those interested in watching.)
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"The province of Hollywood is not action, but illusion."
In the opening of Illusions, Julie Dash presents us with the illusion first, then the action: a glittering Oscar fades away to a war montage: planes flying, artillery going off. In Hollywood, illusion is the action. And much like wars being fought in far-off places, where the ruins left in its wake can be conveniently ignored, the creation of movies are often violent as well, where the labor of those often most marginalized are literally and figuratively left off screen.
Dash, however, renders the invisible labor that goes into movies, visible. Mignon Dupree and Esther Jeteer, both Black women, have to carve out what little space the old studio system is…
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This was a really interesting look into a time and how certain ideas were handled back then. The recreation was very time-accurate and the story still feels relevant. The visuals were pretty great and the acting was also good.
4/5