For Michelle Parkerson, filmmaking and activism are inextricably entwined. Using her camera to bring untold stories of Black and queer female identity to the screen as a producer and director, Parkerson has profiled trailblazing performers and activists such as influential jazz singer Betty Carter, social-justice-oriented a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, and legendary drag performer Stormé DeLarverie, who played a key role in the Stonewall uprising. Her essential documentary works are presented alongside the Afrofuturist love story ODDS AND ENDS, in which Parkerson brings her concern for feminist and LGBTQ issues into the realm of science fiction.

Michelle Parkerson is a writer, independent filmmaker, university lecturer and performance artist from Washington, D.C. and has been an independent film/video maker since the 1980s, focusing particularly on feminist, LGBT and political activism and issues. She has served on the faculties of Temple University, the University of Delaware, Howard University, and Northwestern University. Her films include But Then She’s Betty Carter (1980), about the jazz vocalist, and Urban Odyssey (1991), both seen on PBS. She produced the documentary Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock (1983), about the black women’s a cappella ensemble. She also published a volume of poetry, Waiting Rooms, in 1983. In 1992, she received a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video Fellowship. As a member of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, she wrote and directed Odds and Ends (1993), a science-fiction short about black Amazon warriors. In 1995 she co-directed A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde with Ada Gay Griffin. Parkerson currently heads her own DC-based production company, Eye of the Storm Productions.