DiAna's Hair Ego Remix
Over twists, presses, and wash-and-goes, filmmaker Cheryl Dunye joins other clients and hairstylist DiAna DiAna in her South Carolina salon to discuss the current impact of AIDS on Blacks in the south, and what has changed and stayed the same since DiAna was featured in a seminal short video by Ellen Spiro thirty years ago.
Cheryl Dunye
Ellen Spiro
Also Directed by Cheryl Dunye
After a stint in a juvenile detention center, Treasure is transferred to an adult prison where her mother, whom she has never met, is also imprisoned. Before long, Treasure encounters Brownie, a lifer and gang leader. Brownie reveals that she is Treasure's mother, and takes the girl under her wing, protecting her from the dangers of hardcore prison life. But some women in Brownie's gang resent Treasure's presence, leading to violent conflict.
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Valencia is a collaboration between a national community of queer filmmakers to adapt the underground classic memoir into a kaleidoscopic vision of San Francisco's Mission District in the early 90s during the rise of a punk lesbian diaspora told through the experiences of Michelle, a single rootless twenty-something searching for sex and love, drugs and adventure.
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Two sisters, Nova Bordelon and Charley Bordelon, with her teenage son Micah moves to the heart of Louisiana to claim an inheritance from her recently departed father - an 800-acre sugarcane farm.
Black - once Blue - is now a trans man who works as a security guard in an apartment complex in Oakland. One night, Black notices an ex- girlfriend partying with some other women in one of the buildings. As none of the other security guards want to watch 'the lezzie party', Black volunteers to, thinking he may resolve some inner conflicts from the past. However, things take a turn for the worse.
Cheryl, playing herself, humorously experiences the mysteries of lesbian dating in the '90s.
Short film created for the 2014 San Francisco Dance Film Festival's Co-Laboratory project. Choreographed and performed by Jocquese Whitfield.
Is it who you do, or what you do?
The story of a black lesbian's relationship with a white, upper middle class high school girl.
Also Directed by Ellen Spiro
ACT Up's closing down of the FDA in October 1988 is dramatically recorded by Ellen Spiro.
Women who are HIV-positive discuss how they "came out" about their infection and became politically active.
With her dog Sam and her 1964 Airstream trailer, Spiro joins an adventurous community of roamers and loners on wheels who live on the road full time--by economic neccessity, pleasure, or both. Behind the camera and behind the wheel, Spiro documents a unique world of vintage trailers, vintage dogs and vintage people, where the spirit of the moment collides with stories from the past.
Thirty years after Ellen Spiro made DiAna’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front, the AIDS crisis is still raging in the deep South where the film was shot. Director Cheryl Dunye, after reading about the ongoing AIDS crisis in the South, visits DiAna DiAna and Dr. Bambi Gaddist in the hair salon in Columbia, South Carolina where they first began their innovative safe sex education work. DiAna’s Hair Ego REMIX is the beginning of a new story and new hope in the face of an ongoing tragedy. Commissioned in 2017 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, a program of seven videos prioritizing Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett for Visual AID
Interview with southern gays and lesbians highlight the issues surrounding being "Out" in the south as well as the impact of AIDS on the rural south.
With highlights from the Vancouver 1990 Gay Games, this film recreates an event that empowered participants to strive for their personal best.
A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman's efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
Documentary about Tomas Young, a 25 year old veteran who got paralyzed in Iraq and became an peace activist.
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