This is currently playing at the Film Forum in NYC. Since PBS’ American Masters is one of the producers, I’m guessing the documentary will be playing on PBS stations next season.

I did not know much of anything about Luis Valdez before I saw the documentary. He wrote and directed La Bamba in 1987 and it is still the biggest Latine film. (I’m assuming they are adjusting for inflation, otherwise the numbers are not as big as some other films.)

Much of the movie is spent on his time with the workers in the California fields. First as the second child of 10 children of migrant workers. He and his older brother Frank realized the way out of the fields was college. His brother Frank studied math and physics and went on to work for the government. Luis started on the same path in college but soon dropped that major to study English. He had been interested theater since he was in the first grade and acted in plays in HS and put on puppet shows for the people at the migrant camps.

Dolores Huerta was one of his early supporters and eventually he convinced Cesar Chavez that forming a farm worker’s theater troupe was a serious idea. El Teatro Campesino traveled the migrant camps with one-act plays using humor to bring across their social and political commentary. Later he formed a Chicano cultural center in Del Ray, CA.

The work that made him famous was the play Zoot Suit, which sold out its run in 1978 immediately when it was announced. The Schuberts brought it to Broadway in 1979 and they received a standing ovation on opening night. However, the critics trashed it, one even saying that a problem was that English was not Valdez’ first language. Walter Kerr of the NY Times was the gatekeeper, so the play failed in NYC. There was a movie made in 1981 and documentary director David Alvarado uses a lot of the film to explain the Chicano experience in Los Angeles.

Then came La Bamba.  And at this point the documentary petered out. There’s a split screen showing the movies that Valdez continued to make, none of which reached the heights of Zoot Suit or La Bamba, while showing Valdez at many awards ceremonies receiving lifetime achievement awards from various film, theater, and Latine organizations.

What is clear is that Luis Valdez is the father of Chicano theater and filmmaking and it might not be what it is today without his work.