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Odds and Ends
U.S., 1993
Michelle Parkerson temporarily leaves her East Coast base for Los Angeles to make this narrative short during her participation in the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women. While maintaining her focus on the lives of Black and LGBTQ+ women, here she revisits fictional storytelling with a micro budget film featuring an intergenerational cast that is “carried by the force of its ideas … and the actor’s intrinsic understanding of this world,” writes critic Angelica Jade Bastien. In this near-future drama set in a distant universe in the year 2096, Lieutenant Loz Wayard (Latanya West) falls in love with Sephra (Cynthia L. James) and learns what it means to sacrifice for the struggle as Black women warriors wage war against racial and gender annihilation. The film features notable performances from veteran character actor Denise Dowse and Cora Lee Day (Daughters of the Dust).—Beandrea July
DCP, color, 38 min. Director/Screenwriter: Michelle Parkerson. With: Latanya West, Cynthia L. James, Cora Lee Day, Denise Dowse.
Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box
U.S., 1987
One of Parkerson’s earliest films tells the story of Stormé DeLarverie, who toured the Black theater circuit during the 1950s and ’60s with the historic Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show. Once the Revue’s sole “male impersonator,” DeLarverie bucked rigid gender roles on and off stage. Parkerson catches up with Stormé decades later and finds her working as a bodyguard at a women’s bar. Gradually, Parker takes us beneath Stormé’s brusque exterior to reveal a trailblazer who is still marked by the devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and also sustained by a confident love of self.—Beandrea July
16mm, color, 21 min. Director: Michelle Parkerson.
A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde
U.S., 1995
On a half-a-million-dollar budget raised from grants, sponsors and individual donors, Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson delivered a tender, in-depth documentary of the life of the influential Black lesbian poet, mother, teacher and activist Audre Lorde. It took nine years to complete the film, and Lorde passed away three years before its official release. From Lorde’s childhood roots in Harlem to her battle with breast cancer, experimental feminist filmmaker Holly Fisher (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) edits the film, creating “a sonic and visual litany,” writes Lorde biographer Alexis Pauline Gumbs, that includes vérité and archival footage as well as excerpts of Lorde reading from her memoir Zami. The result is a vibrant and tender observational document of the life of a complex figure and her unique body of work.—Beandrea July
16mm, color, 90 min. Directors: Ada Gay Griffin, Michelle Parkerson. Screenwriter: Ada Gay Griffin.
