La Chicano Movies

[Saundra Balock]

The best Mexican-American movies provide real insight into a cross-culture experience. Some of them are very specific, dealing with an individual person of note or a select subgroup of people. Others, meanwhile, are more universal, getting at themes that speak to a majority of people from such a background.

Diversity is important onscreen, and a number of directors have made a point of capturing different elements of the Mexican-American experience. Allison Anders, Gregory Nava, and Alfonso Arau have all made Chicano films. No matter who's behind the camera, one thing viewers can count on is that these pictures are almost always made with real passion. They aren't just high-concept fluff. Instead, they exist to tell stories about people, and to hit on ideas that are relevant to society.

Which are the best? Which famous Mexican-American comedies, dramas, and romances have the most worthwhile things to say? You will get to decide that. Vote up the movies that best capture the Mexican-American experience.

Stand and Deliver is the 1998 movie about a math teacher named Jamie Escalante (Edward James Olmos) working at an East Los Angeles high school with a large Hispanic population. He defies expectations by teaching his students advanced calculus.

La Bamba is a 1987 biopic of singer Ritchie Valens, who gave the world a few unforgettable hit songs before tragically perishing in a plane crash. Although his music career is the focal point of the film, time is also spent showing him with his extended family. His relatives have varying reactions to his success. Some are proud of him, others resentful.

Selena was much more than a pop singer in the Mexican-American community. She was a full-fledged icon -- loved, adored, and worshipped by millions. Jennifer Lopez plays her in this biopic that charts the course of her skyrocketing career, which brought Tejano music into the maintstream.

Aside from effectively depicting how she rose to such prominence, the film gets into the profound sense of loss the Mexican-American community felt upon her untimely demise after being slain by a friend and business partner. The cumulative effect is that viewers come away with a strong sense of what she meant to so many.

The film addresses racism against Mexican-Americans, with the characters presumed guilty as much for their race as for any criminal activity they've partaken in. In depicting this actual event, it explores prejudice often faced by Hispanics.

Gregory Nava's 1995 drama My Family begins in the late 1920s, as a Mexican man named Jose (Jacob Vargas) makes the trek from Mexico to Los Angeles. He meets and marries a nanny named Maria (Jennifer Lopez), and together they begin raising a family. She is eventually deported back to Mexico. Later, the story jumps to the '60s, where one subplot follows Jose and Maria's now-grown son Jimmy (Jimmy Smits) as he begins his own family after marrying a woman to prevent her deportation. The lives of their other children are also shown.

My Family was heralded by critic Roger Ebert, who summed up its core strength in saying it is "is the great American story, told again and again, of how our families came to this land and tried to make it better for their children."

Walkout dramatizes an important moment in the history of Mexican-American students. Based on a true story, it shows a large group of Chicano students staging a school walkout to protest inequality within the educational system. Specifically, they feel punishments for Mexican students are unnecessarily harsh, and they object to a lack of bilingual textbooks.

Alienation, defiance, struggle and an exuberant pride were common themes in those early films; many of which showcased identity, history and calls to action. The early films captured the zeitgeist of the times, and gave voice to a community suffering extreme social and economic inequality in every aspect of American life. Misunderstood and routinely maligned within mainstream media of the time, or more often simply ignored, Chicano filmmakers, often with sparse funding and limited training, began to push back, creating a new dynamic body of work that portrayed Chicano characters, history and cultural expressions as dynamic, complex and vital.

After decades of frequent marginalization, within established distribution outlets, mainstream acceptance of early Chicano films for their "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in the history of film in the United States, is increasingly evident in the growing roster of films selected for preservation as part of the National Film Registry. Below are just a few of the titles included in the registry.

New labels have arrived to describe an increasing diverse community; Xicano, Latinx, Generation Mex. 50 years later, once outsider provocateur activists like Corky Gonzales, now has a major library named after him in Denver and was recently the subject of a Google Doodle.

Today our communities find themselves in a nation with nativism on the rise, anti-immigrant policies and mass deportations being pushed by politicians from both major political parties. In 2021, a UCLA Diversity report found that Latino actors accounted for 6.3% of all roles on Broadcast scripted shows. Latinos make up 18.5% of the U.S. population, with Mexican-Americans being the largest subgroup of 61.4. % or 37.2 million people, which is slighter under the total population of entire population of Canada. Yet, this large and geographically diverse ground of people are still systematically under-represented in all aspects of U.S. Media.

El movimiento del cine chicano surgi a finales de la dcada de 1960, inextricablemente entrelazado a las comunidades de las que surgi. Estas primeras pelculas encarnaron y dieron voz a los movimientos de protesta social ms grandes que surgieron en los enclaves mexicano-estadounidenses en todo el Suroeste de Estados Unidos.

La alienacin, el desafo, la lucha y un orgullo exuberante, fueron temas comunes en esas primeras pelculas; muchas de las cuales mostraron identidad, historia y fueron llamadas a la accin. Estas obras capturaron el espritu de la poca y dieron voz a una comunidad que sufra desigualdad social y econmica extremas en todos los aspectos de la vida estadounidense.

Incomprendidos, habitualmente vilipendiados dentro de los principales medios de comunicacin de la poca y, ms a menudo, simplemente ignorados. Los cineastas chicanos, en su mayora, tenan fondos escasos y capacitacin limitada, por lo que comenzaron a retroceder, decidiendo crear un nuevo cuerpo de trabajo dinmico que retratara a los personajes, la historia y las expresiones culturales chicanas de forma dinmica, compleja y vital.

Los primeros trabajos de cineastas chicanos recibieron elogios de la corriente principal. Agueda Martnez: Our People Our Country, dirigida por Esperanza Vsquez y producida por Moctesuma Esparza, fue nominada a un Oscar en la categora de Documental Corto en 1978. La pelcula El Norte del director Greg Nava (1984), obtuvo el premio Writers Guild Awards en 1985 al mejor guion escrito para la pantalla y, en el mismo ao, una nominacin al Oscar al Mejor Guion Escrito para la Pantalla. Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (1985), dirigida por Lourdes Portillo y Susana Muoz fue nominada al Oscar a la Mejor Pelcula Documental en 1986.

Despus de dcadas de marginacin frecuente dentro de los puntos de distribucin establecidos, la aceptacin generalizada de las primeras pelculas chicanas por su significado cultural, histrico o esttico" en la historia del cine en los Estados Unidos, es cada vez ms evidente en la lista creciente de pelculas seleccionadas para conservacin como parte del Registro Nacional de Cine. A continuacin, se muestran algunos de los ttulos incluidos en el registro.

Han llegado nuevas etiquetas para describir a una comunidad cada vez ms diversa; Xicano, Latinx, Generacin Mex. 50 aos despus, activistas provocadores externos como Corky Gonzales, ahora tienen una biblioteca importante que lleva su nombre en Denver y recientemente fue objeto de un Doodle de Google.

Al pasar el 50 aniversario del Nacimiento del Cine Chicano se reconoce que, a pesar de los tremendos cambios en nuestra sociedad, los problemas de acceso a capacitacin, capital, equipo y distribucin; siguen siendo grandes obstculos para los aspirantes a cineastas.

Hoy, nuestras comunidades se encuentran en una nacin con nativismo en aumento, polticas antiinmigrantes y deportaciones masivas impulsadas por polticos de los dos principales partidos polticos. En 2021, un informe de diversidad de la UCLA encontr que los actores latinos representaron el 6,3 % de todos los roles en los programas con guion de Broadcast. Los latinos representan el 18,5 % de la poblacin de los Estados Unidos, siendo los mexicoamericanos el subgrupo ms grande con 61,4. %, es decir, 37,2 millones de personas, que es menor al total de la poblacin de Canad. Sin embargo, este grupo de personas grande y geogrficamente diverso, todava est subrepresentado sistemticamente en todos los aspectos dentro de los medios de Estados Unidos.

Se termina esta misiva donde empez el Cine Chicano; con el poemario Yo soy Joaqun de Luis Valdez. Su ltima lnea resume gran parte de lo que, en ltimo lugar, es el movimiento cinematogrfico chicano, una declaracin desafiante y una identidad nica de resistencia.

Mis preferencias son las pelculas internacionales, especialmente, las japonesas. Las pelculas japonesas clsicas: Shoplifters Dirigida por Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018; todas las del director Akira Kurosawa y la fabulosa Totoro.

Me especialic en cine como estudiante universitario. El cine ha sido un elemento esencial en mi vida. De nio vea pelculas mexicanas con mis abuelos a principios de los aos 50. Disfruto de una amplia gama de pelculas, es decir, de Oliver Stone a Lena Wertmuller, Fellini y, por supuesto, Buuel. Tambin me gustan los documentales polticos.

Debido a mi amor por los cmics, soy un gran admirador del universo cinematogrfico de Marvel. Una de las cosas que realmente aprecio es su creciente diversidad de actores, directores, productores, etc.

c80f0f1006