Diva TV (lesbian video activist collective)

Diva TV was a lesbian video activist collective founded in New York City in 1989. The name was an acronym for “Damned Interfering Video Activist Television”. It was an affinity Group of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its legacy is to have preserved many of ACT UP's demonstrations, civil disobedience actions and public reaction to the group from the streets of New York as the AIDS crisis unfolded there. Members of Diva TV identified themselves as partisan activists who created media in the same way participants in the Indymedia movement would fifteen years later—or in the same way Third World Newsreel did in the 1960s using earlier 8-mm film technology. Selected clips from Diva TV's ACT-UP films can be viewed on their website. A videotape archive of their work can be viewed at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, NY, and another is available at the New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division.