The Early Work of Luis Valdez (1969)
Directed by Luis Valdez
20 minutes
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.