INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art today announced an exhibition in collaboration with acclaimed filmmaker Julie Dash titled Smuggling Daydreams into Reality: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The exhibition will present short films produced by area high school students over the course of their participation in the IMA’s Museum Apprentice Program. The students were mentored by Dash over a period of seven months as they created a series of films exploring the concept of dreams deferred and dreams realized.

The exhibition also will feature a documentary by Julie Dash that chronicles the students’ creative process throughout the apprenticeship. Visitors to the exhibition can contribute a representation of their own past, present and future dreams to a “dream network” of visitorcreated artwork. Additional free drop-in art making projects for all ages will be offered Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. during the exhibition. Smuggling Daydreams into Reality will open August 8, 2009, in the Museum’s Star Studio and will run through January 18, 2010.

Julie Dash has received numerous awards since embarking on her film career. With the debut of “Daughters of the Dust” in January 1992, Dash became the first African-American woman to have a full-length general theatrical release in the United States. O, The Oprah Magazine included “Daughters” among its 50 Greatest Chick Flicks, and in 1999, the 25th Annual Newark Black Film Festival honored Julie and her film “Daughters of the Dust” as being one of the most important cinematic achievements in Black Cinema in the 20th century. The Library of Congress has placed Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” in the National Film Registry; her feature film joins a select group of American films preserved as National Treasures.

”Julie is very committed to mentoring young filmmakers as artists,” said Linda Duke, director of education at the IMA. “She looks for ways to help each of them find his or her own unique voice and message.”

Throughout the seven-month program, Dash taught the students about the use of film as a visual language and instructed them on various filming techniques. Students were each given a mini digital camcorder and participated in filming exercises inside the IMA galleries and around Indianapolis. Students were also encouraged to film footage from their own lives.

The Museum Apprentice Program at the Indianapolis Museum of Art offers high school students an opportunity to learn about museum careers through part-time employment at the IMA. In addition to working with Dash, this year’s select group of MAP students also received intensive media and technical training from videographers Rogelio Garza and Louis Ly by way of IMA’s collaboration with FIRME Productions, the Latino/a Youth Collective and the School of Informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, which provided its state-of-the art media lab to this year’s MAP students.

Students in the 2009 MAP program represent the following high schools: Ben Davis University, Broad Ripple High School, The Independence Academy of Indiana, Indiana School for the Deaf, Northwest High School and Warren Central High School.