Thursday, November 16 at 8 PM  

Doors 7:30 pm; FREE EVENT!                                 

Join us for the last Race & Space event of 2017! This time, we’ll focus on the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles with guest curator Laura Isabel Serna, Associate Professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles. Before 1848 the area we know refer to as Los Angeles belonged to Mexico, which had colonized the region over the course of centuries. The region’s Mexican population found themselves second-class citizens in their own land.  The history of Los Angeles has been defined by struggles over social space amongst the regions racial groups.

Echo Park Film Center will project five short films focused on Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles.  We will screen a 1957 film that explores Chavez Ravine and its inhabitants as the city planned to build a public housing project (though this plan would be displaced by Dodger Stadium); a 1976 film made at USC that presents contrasting views of a church-run garment factory staffed by undocumented immigrant women; two films that approach the 1971 Chicano Moratorium from distinct positions, one that of the Anglo public and the other from the point of view of the Chicano demonstrators themselves; and, finally, a 1977 film documenting the first phase of the “Great Wall” mural project along the Tujunga Wash drainage canal in the San Fernando Valley in the summer of 1976.

Introduction and discussion with Dr. Laura Isabel Serna (University of Southern California).

Curated by Dr. Laura Isabel Serna and Dino Everett (University of Southern California), who will also project.

Program:

Chavez Ravine  (1957) Dir. Don Heath [5 min. University of Southern California School of Film and Television]

Sense of Community (1976) Dir. Jeremy Lezin. [5 min.  USC]

What Really Happened at the Chicano Moratorium (1971) Dir.  [14 min. USC]

Requiem 29  (1970) Dir. Robert Garcia. [31 min. UCLA]

The Great Wall  (1977) Dir. Donna Deitch [9 min. USC]

 

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org.

 

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