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DiAna's Hair Ego documents the operations of the South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN), directed by DiAna DiAna from her I M A G I N G THE Q U E E R SOUTH 41 hair salon. The group's success has largely come from its insistence on reaching out to local communities through grassroots organization and education. Designed to address localized audiences (among them the New York AIDS activists who helped fund, make, and distribute DiAna's Hair Ego), Spiro's tape mimics SCAEN's media makers, who strive to be aware of its audience and to communicate with them in their vernacular.

Donna Red Wing, for instance, discusses the campaign with a cup of tea or coffee in the intimacy of a din- 24 SON AID GREGG Ballot Measure 9 (Heather MacDonald 1994). Kathleen Saadat is on the right. Courtesy Zeitgeist Films ing room setting; in another domestic setting, she describes the threats that she and her partner received during the Measure 9 campaign; and in one scene she and a woman, presumably her partner, cook together and then eat with friends. Even with MacDonald's expanded representation of gay and lesbian voices, home life, and personal experiences, however, gays and lesbians are still assimilated into a nonthreatening, nonsexual image.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 1994. Bernstein is a Pacifica radio talk show host and Velazquez made the video Moving Mountains: The Story of the Yin Mien. Both expressed apprehension about the potential for marginalizing segments of the lesbian and gay community through this use of nonthreatening speakers, though both equally felt this was required given the political urgency of the moment and the time constraints. The information on the distribution and exhibition history of Fighting for Our Lives is taken from the Velazquez and Bernstein interview.