Diana’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front

© Diana’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front (Ellen Spiro, 1990)

Diana’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front

With her partner Dr. Bambi Sumpter, beautician DiAna DiAna took on educating the Black community in the town of Columbia in South Carolina about AIDS prevention because information about the epidemic there was too lacking. Diana's Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front documents the growth of the South Carolina AIDS Education Network, based in Diana's beauty salon.

At the time, the organisation faced harsh criticism from republican and Christian corners. Despite that pressure, the couple refused to modify their classes. The organisation is funded, still, by the tips they collect at the salon. Their operation has since become an example to many other educational and social organisations. 

The film is part of a short film programme full of experimental, queer, and militant work by Barbara Hammer and yann beauvais, among others, screened on the occasion of the publication of the book Time with Us. In the presence of filmmaker Stéphane Gérard.