Deep Conditions Spotlight

Hair salons and barbershops have always played a key role as symbols of community in the Black diaspora. As our crowns continue to be policed in schools and the workplace, these vibrant hubs provide a key safe space for us to care for, and celebrate our curls, coils and waves. From the classic Coming to America (1998) barbershop scenes and 'Soul Glo' moments to Tim Story's Barbershop (2002), beauty parlours have been a mainstay in Black cinema.

Whatever the weather, or time of day (and many times nights), barbershops and salons are a place of spirited energy and therapeutic calm. They serve as both a site for lively conversation and networking, but also, as an open stage for radical imagination and storytelling. Our hair is intrinsic to our Black identity and expression of self. For hundreds of years, how we wear our hair can hold multiple meanings beyond aesthetics. It can also be a gesture of empowerment, as we witnessed with the Black Panther Party and Civil Rights movement.

In this vein, our hair has been politicized as one more feature of hierarchy in Eurocentric standards of beauty. Depending on how curly it is, one can be classified as having 'good hair' or 'bad hair' as we saw with the pencil test during the Apartheid era in South Africa. Repercussions of this form of discrimination continue to reverberate in the same way that colourism has seeped into daily unconscious bias.

These films celebrate these sanctuaries of beauty and community, and also, our mane conditions in all their glory.