Film Forum

I Am Joaquin
U.S., 1969
Directed and Narrated by Luis Valdez
Based on the poem by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales
Approx. 20 min.

In his first film, Luis Valdez adapts Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’ titular 1967 poem into a moving collage of image and sound. Selected for preservation by National Film Registry in 2010, Valdez presents a powerful historic résumé of Chicano culture and Mexican history, with images from Mexican muralists Orozco, Rivera, and Sisqueiros, music by Daniel Valdez, and shot on 16mm. A key work of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, the collaboration between Gonzales’ poem, Valdez’s direction, and talents of El Teatro Campesino struck like lighting during the formation of a new Mexican American identity growing in the United States.

Los Vendidos (The Sellouts)
U.S., 1972
Created and Written by Luis Valdez with El Teatro Campesino
Starring Felix Alvarez, Socorro Valdez
Approx. 17 min.

A television adaptation of an El Teatro Campesino acto (short skits) first staged in 1967 for KNBC in Los Angeles sets the scene in “Honest Sancho’s Used Mexican Lot and Curio Shop,” where various models of Mexicans are displayed as robot-machines for sale. In walks Miss Jimenez (Socorro Valdez), looking for a “Mexican type” for the Governor’s new administration. Valdez and his El Teatro Campesino company uproariously skewer Mexican American stereotypes as well as the assimilating forces that perpetuate them.

El Corrido
U.S., 1976
Written and Directed by Luis Valdez
Starring Daniel and Luis Valdez, Felix Alvarez, and El Teatro Campesino
Approx. 70 min.

A tragi-comic musical developed over several years with El Teatro Campesino, Valdez and company blend the Mexican folk traditions of carpas (tent shows) and the corrido (ballads) into Jesus Pelado Rasquachi’s story of immigration to the U.S. as a laborer. Though misfortune follows him at every turn, El Teatro Campesino’s use of agitprop, social realism, and music to accompany the action as actors moved in and out of character further solidified ETC’s style as a theater company in the established Chicano movement.

Programmed by Cristina Delgado

Presented with support from The Helen Frankenthaler Endowed Fund for Films on Art, The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund, and The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film