Producer and director Winter Dunn is a graduate of Chicago Academy for the Arts. Dunn has her own full-service multimedia production company, Winter Dunn Productions, which is based in Los Angeles. WDP premiered its first film, Junebug, in 2020 at the American Black Film Festival. It was also a selection at the 2020 Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival. Dunn is excited to be a part of Issa Rae Presents and recently shared her journey with rolling out.
How did you get started in the entertainment industry?
I’ve been blessed. I’ve been in the arts my entire life. I’m from Gary, Indiana, and went to art school in the sixth grade. Back then I was a dance major and really explored my creativity through movement and through my body. Even then it was very apparent that I had an instinct to connect emotion and storytelling in movements. For me, it was contemporary, modern and grounded. I wanted it to make you feel something in the way I moved and the way I expressed [myself] through dance. So, that’s kind of the start of my creativity.
From there, I ended up at another art school in Chicago, where I started training in theater. That’s where I started directing. I directed my first play. And it was like, “Oh, this is kind of juicy,” because it used all these pieces of my experience like dance and how to communicate with someone through your body. It is the exact same thing as directing someone and getting them to feel what you see in your mind’s eye with a story for them to take it on and put it in their bodies.
Continue reading on the next page.
