Filmmaker Bios

Ada Gay GriffinAda Gay Griffin is an African-American activist working in electronic media and film production. She was formerly executive director of Third World Newsreel and works to ensure a flourishing future for producers of color in progressive media. She studied art, political science, and black feminist writing at Hampshire College, where she studied the works of Audre Lorde. Griffin previously directed and produced Can't Jail the Revolution and Break the Walls Down, and developed Black in a Small Town, a documentary series that explored issues of race and class in semi-rural areas in the United States. She served as first assistant director on the drama Dead Man's Shoes, which premiered at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.

Michelle Parkerson Michelle Parkerson is a writer, independent filmmaker, university lecturer and performance artist from Washington, D.C. 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, about the jazz vocalist, Urban Odyssey (both seen on PBS) and Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock, about the black women's a cappella ensemble. 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, a science-fiction short about black Amazon warriors.