Don’t call Sheila Johnson a billionaire. “I hate that,” she says.

Technically, Johnson, the BET co-founder-turned-philanthropist is worth only $400 million according to last year’s Forbes list of America’s richest Black folks. Recently, she put $500,000 of that fortune where her heart is: "The Other City," a film that shines the light on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Washington, D.C.

Johnson traveled from her Virginia home to Vienna this week to introduce the film to an international audience at the International HIV/AIDS conference. The bulk of the estimated 25,000 attendees from around the world have no idea about the severity of the problem in the nation’s capital. They see President Obama and Michelle on television and think the chocolate in Chocolate City is now strictly Godiva.

But "the other city" that the film discusses makes clear that HIV/AIDS is Washington’s dirty little secret. The District of Columbia has the country’s highest rate of HIV/AIDS--higher than in a number of poor African countries. Blacks are the vast majority of those infected with and affected by the virus.

“The Other City” takes a hard look at the crisis through the eyes of several people who are living with it—and dying from it. It premiered last spring at the Tribeca Film festival and is scheduled to air on television primetime, though Johnson and director Susan Koch are still hush-hush about the details. (HBO, anyone?) Looking fit at 61 and sounding feisty, Johnson joined a group of African-American journalists for breakfast in Vienna to discuss, her career as film producer, the HIV/AIDS crisis in America and those infamous BET videos.

Why did you produce “The Other City”?
I had been traveling around the world as a global ambassador for CARE and seeing the victims of AIDS in Africa, in South American and other places. But then I’d come home to Washington and was really disturbed by the problem right here in my own backyard. It was easier and sexier to say, ‘I’m going to Tanzania and Kenya and I’m doing this, and I’m doing that.” But I felt so guilty when I would come home.

Talk about the problem in D.C.
Just a half mile from the capitol steps, we literally have another city in Washington. People are living in the shadow of the seat of the federal government and the international government who have no rights and no voice. People in D.C. have no idea about the tragedy in their own city. We wanted to be able to tell the stories of those people that are living beneath the radar. We also tried to show the work being done by unsung heroes out there and allow them to come to life.

How has the film been received?
Amazing, but the main reaction is shock. It’s been a huge wake-up call. Even reporters are surprised by the extent of the problem. Let me tell you a story. We had a screening in Washington, and a saw a reporter from a glossy Washington magazine walk out before it was over. I’m like, “Where you going?” He said, “This is too painful to watch.” I said, “How dare you leave here.” You have go back in there to see what’s going on. He came back. But this is what I mean by ‘the other city.’

And bad reaction?
The only negative thing that has happened is that members of the city council are freaking. They aren’t getting it. In this city nothing’s getting done. [D.C. Delegate to Congress] Eleanor Holmes Norton gets it. She said the district ought to be ashamed of itself. Someone’s got to be held accountable. We have a mayor’s race going on right now. We don’t know how it’s going to come out. Whoever it is, we’re going to move right on in there and do a private screening for this person.

What’s your personal connection to AIDS?
I have friends that have died of AIDS, as so many of us do. And the more I talk about the film, the more people speak up and tell me about someone in their family. Our surgeon general [Dr. Regina Benjamin] came to see the film. She was crying through three-fourths of it. She had a hard time, because her brother died of AIDS. It just really brought it home.

You’re a mother…
It scares me. We’re seeing so many young people that are becoming HIV-positive. I have a daughter who’s 24, and a son who’s 20. I talk to them constantly. I think I scared my daughter enough. She’s been with the same guy for four years. She said, “Don’t worry mama, he’s been tested, he’s fine.” It’s my son who’s in college that I worry about. I said, “Brett, you’ve got to understand that it’s a dangerous world out there.” We were buying supplies at Target and I bought this big box of condoms. I didn’t know how else to [get into] his head. Later, I checked his room