Film Forum

Luis Valdez is widely regarded as the father of Chicano theater and film. The son of migrant farmworkers, he founded El Teatro Campesino in 1965 on the picket lines of the Delano Grape Strike, staging short plays on flatbed trucks and in union halls to galvanize Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers. His landmark play, Zoot Suit, drawn from the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and the Zoot Suit Riots, became the first Chicano production on Broadway and was later adapted into a 1981 feature film starring Edward James Olmos. In 1987 he wrote and directed LA BAMBA the Ritchie Valens biopic that became a major box office success and brought his vision to mainstream audiences. Across six decades, Valdez has written and directed dozens of plays and films, earned a Peabody Award and the National Medal of Arts, and seen ZOOT SUIT, LA BAMBA, and I AM JOAQUIN all preserved in the Library of Congress National Film Registry, leaving an indelible mark on American storytelling.

David Alvarado, a Chicano documentary filmmaker, is passionate about human rights, science, and technology. His latest film, AMERICAN PACHUCO: THE LEGEND OF LUIS VALDEZ, won both the Festival Favorite Award and the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary at Sundance. Alvarado’s other notable works include We Are As Gods (adapted into an eight-part Audible Originals podcast), Bill Nye: Science Guy, Blood Sugar Rising, and the BFI-nominated THE IMMORTALISTS. He also produced and shot TRUE CONVICTION. A graduate of Stanford University’s MFA in Documentary Filmmaking, Alvarado co-founded Structure Films, focusing on science and tech stories. In 2022, he was named one of DOC NYC and HBO’s 40 under 40 documentary filmmakers to watch.

Alma Martinez is an actor, director, producer, and author whose theatre career spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, and Mexican and European stages. In 2023, she received the Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Drama for her performance in Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles at Yale Repertory Theatre. Her streaming credits include Gentefied, Bosch: Legacy, and the Peabody Award-winning The Bridge (Season 1). Her film credits include A LITTLE FAMILY DRAMA (Best Actress, Silicon Beach Film Festival), CLEMENCY (winner of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize), BORN IN EAST L.A., and CAKE. A longtime collaborator with Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Martinez appeared in ZOOT SUIT (stage and film) and the Peabody Award-winning Corridos: Tales of Passion and Revolution. With Valdez directing, she produced his play Zoot Suit with Mexico’s National Theatre Company, where it became the first non-Mexican play—and the first by a non-Mexican playwright and director—to receive the Best Musical of the Year award. She holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MFA from USC, a BA from Whittier College, and is a Fulbright Scholar. Her scholarship on Chicanx and Latin American political theatre has been widely published. She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, SCD, ANDA, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Television Academy. Born in Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico, she is a proud Chicana and Mexican immigrant.

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