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In my book, The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture, I provide an in-depth exploration of the Chicano film movement. The Bronze Screen offers social, textual and cultural readings, explaining the significance of films such as Raices de Sangre, Zoot Suit, La Bamba, Break of Dawn, American Me, and documentaries like La Ofrenda, Yo Soy Chicano, Chicana. The following discussion is excerpted from the introduction to my book:
My aim in this book is to interrupt and interrogate the terms of the critical discourse on Chicano cinema. I point to the historical location of Us (Chicanas and Chicanos) behind the camera, as directors, writers, cinematographers, editors; Us as images on the screen, as subject matter, actors, actresses; and, finally, Us as spectators, as viewers seated between "the look of the camera" and "the images on the screen." Stated in different terms, my project concerns the emergence of a film culture by. about, and for Chicanas and Chicanos.
A comprehensive notation of Chicano films, themes, biographies of filmmakers, and critical discourse on films is compiled in the two anthologies on the Chicano film movement, Chicano Cinema, edited by Gary Keller, and Chicanos and Film, edited by Chon Noriega.1 As the introductions by Keller and Noriega detail, Chicano film culture developed with the Chicano Power Movement in the late 1960's. In this respect, the social formation of Chicano filmmakers is linked to early expressions of Chicano nationalism, which, in turn, demanded a certain unity of political goals out of the diversity of cultural practices and social experiences.2
I have noted that my project explores a film culture by, for, and about Chicanas and Chicanos. Despite the fine surveys that exist about Chicano cinema, documenting its history, its context, contents and forms, details of filmmakers' formation, and so on., a certain uncertainty remains to the term Chicano cinema. The ambiguity of the term, however, is not restricted to Chicano cinema, but is often a vexed question in attempts to specify the domains of oppositional film cultures such as blacks and women's cinemas.3
Initial attempts to define the parameters of Chicano cinema connected Chicano films to a cultural politics. In 1975, Francisco X. Camplis, for instance, called on filmmakers to create "a culture by and for us."4 Inspired by the works of Latin American filmmakers (Fernando Solanas, Jorge Sanjines, Octavio Getino, Glauber Rocha, Walter Achugar), Camplis urged the making of "revolutionary," "decolonizing films." as well as the development of a vernacular aesthetics.5 It is in this context that Camplis expressed his vision for Chicano cinema with these words: "Our films will not merely dust off the cobwebs from the moldy relics of our pre-Colombian past but provide a viable connection from the past to the present and beyond into the future."6
In an early essay, Jason C. Johansen addressed the "non-rigorous definition of Chicano films" screened at the San Antonio film festival. Writing in the late 1970's, Johansen noted that the festival included films by, for, and about Chicanos. Yet, this all-inclusiveness elided what Johansen considered vital: the "purpose/function" of Chicano cinema, which "lies in the roots, origins, and determinants of the genre's development."7 Like Camplis, Johansen drew his inspiration from the new Latin American cinema, outlining a general framework for Chicano cinema along similar lines:
Chicano film as an alternative cinema requires at least some semblance of a theoretical foundation. Our compañeros in América Latina are way ahead of us in the game, and they provide the basis for the following: The demystification of film... The decolonization of minds... Reflective and open-ended... The altering of consciousness... Effect social change... A Chicano film language.8
These prior efforts to stakeout the cultural politics of Chicano cinema thus advocated a practice of filmmaking tailored to Chicano spectators. Rooted in the politics of anti racism, early filmmakers foregrounded "communication with La Raza,"9 as well as alternative screening venues, in order to "engage the audiences by discussing our films with them after showings."10 Camplis succinctly sums up Chicano cinema's explicit concern for its spectatorship: "Our audience in Raza. I make films for Raza because I am Raza."11
And so filmmakers were defining an oppositional cinema, a cinema allied to the struggle for liberation of the Chicano nation, a revolutionary cultural politics. However, as the struggle for self-determination waned with the decline of large-scale popular social mobilization, and as the cultural politics of the Chicano Power Movement retreated into more localized sites of resistance at various public and private institutions, among them universities, centros culturales, museums, and even commercial sites like the television and film industries, the definition of Chicano cinema shifted substantially. No longer was Chicano cinema defined as oppositional cinema by, for, and about Chicanos, but it came to mean films "whose major production decisions are made by Chicanos." This definition was advanced in 1991 by filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño at the "Chicano cinema" panel of the Society for Cinema Studies conference in Los Angeles. In Treviño's estimation, films no longer have to be about Chicanos, or for Chicanos. The definitive criterion is now the production, namely, films by Chicanos. And since the political upheavals of the 60s and 70s have reached a low point, the oppositionality of the cultural forms is no longer as strident a prerequisite for the category of Chicano cinema.
In the two edited books on Chicano films, both Keller and Noriega prefer to advance a definition of Chicano cinema against images of Chicanos in Hollywood mainstream and Mexican commercial cinemas. Keller Writes: It is in this sense that Chicano cinema has been so painfully overdetermined. The story, the content, rests like a landscape of prominent lesions, urging us to artistic salving. What was painful in itself, 'reality,' had become infected by the distortive perversity of both United States and Mexican cinema.12
And, as Noriega adds: In the final analysis, "Chicanos and film" falls within the domain of two national cultures: American and Americas...Our representation for the most part has been limited to the commercial film and television industries of Hollywood and Mexico.13
Situating Chicano and Chicana filmmaking within this Mexican/American duality is understandable because in order to examine hoe Chicanos make films there needs to be some consideration of the relationship Chicanos have had historically, as consumers of images, to films from both sides of the border.
The trinity "by, for, about" made sense at a particular historical moment. In its embryonic stage, Chicano films could not be defined solely by their contents, that is, in terms of the about, because historically many films dealing with the Chicano experience, produced prior and during the Movement, were inadequate in reflecting "our" experience from "our" perspective. Negative representations about Chicanos originated during the first moving pictures, beginning with the early twentieth century "Greaser" genre on to the "Westerns," the "social problem" genre up to the recent onslaught of "gangxploitation" films.14 Keeping the "by, for, about" criteria intact prevented the kinds of distortions that have normalized Chicanos and Chicanas as images of the "other" in mainstream films. However, if the "for" and in some cases the "about" are no longer fashionable for defining Chicano cinema, then what has in fact dropped out of the equation is the cultural politics that inspired a whole generation in the struggle for human rights and social justice. That is to say, Chicano and Chicana cultural politics has been, and continues to be, an oppositional politics. Any consideration of Chicano films as oppositional cultural forms forces us to consider their politics, their "purpose/function" (as Johansen reminded us over a decade ago), in relationship to dominant cinema, and with regard to specific contexts. If not, we are left with mechanistic or formulaic criteria where race (biology) overdetermines the cultural politics of opposition.
Specifying that Chicano represents a political category of progressive politics allows us to circumscribe further the specificity of the Chicano film movement. If we recognize that the Chicano film movement developed within the context of the Chicano Power Movement's struggle of anti racism (equality, self-determination, human rights, and social justice), then its cinema must somehow remain bound by these ideals. However, if we disarticulate the cultural politics from Chicano cinema, then the definition becomes too banal, too all-inclusive, too pluralistic, equating cultural forms engaged in anti-racism and empowerment struggles with those informed by fascist, racist, or sexist tendencies.
In my effort to interrupt and redefine the terms of critical discourse on Chicano films, the "for" part of the triplet bears further exploration. Does the "for" mean representing or speaking on behalf of Chicanos and Chicanas, or does it refer to something quite different? If it is the former, then there is a certain paternalism in claiming to speak for the community as though its members cannot speak on their own behalf. This is why the video artist, Salomé España insists (if I may paraphrase) that she speaks, not for the Chicano community, but from the specificity of her experience as a Chicana in L.A..15
In this light, a different take on the notion of "for" refers to the dialogic/communicative tendencies inherent in cinema --the question of spectatorship so central in the critical discourse on film. In its original incarnation, the category of Chicano cinema positioned the issue of "address" on its center-stage (i.e. "communication with La Raza"). For all their romanticism, Latin American guerrilla filmmakers who in turn inspired a generation of Chicano filmmakers, stressed the politics of communicating with the "masses." The Latin Americans envisioned the spectators'/audiences centrality to their proyecto de concientización, which Willeman translated as a project "stressing lucidity in viewers."16
Although the proyecto de concientización is, in our current historical moment, a difficult (perhaps, even out-moded) enterprise, it directs us nonetheless in asking pertinent questions about the cultural politics of Chicano cinema. Does the cultural specificity of Chicano films challenge U.S. aspirations to "universality" (melting-pot-ism)? Do these cultural forms easily melt into the "American" mainstream, ignoring the oppositionality in difference? Are these films inflected by culturally specific codes of address? Do Chicano films address Chicanos and Chicanas in their specific histories of struggle? Do they engage current problems, the real issues at stake in [Chicano and Chicana] communities? These are some of the questions that occupy me throughout this exploration of Chicano and Chicana film culture.
This article was originally published in the 1994 festival program of Cine Estudiantil: Chicano/Latino & Native American Student Film & Video Festival
Rosa Linda Fregoso, Associate Professor - University of California, Davis
1. Chicanos and Film, Editor Chon Noriega (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Chicano Cinema, Editor Gary Keller (Binghamton: Bilingual Review Press, 1985).
2. Carlos Muñoz, Youth, Identity and Power, (London and New York: Verso, 1989).
3. See Teresa de Lauretis, "Guerillas in the midst: women's cinema in the 80s," Screen 31:1, Spring 1990; B. Ruby Rich, "In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism," Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, Ed. Patricia Erens, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1990; and Clyde Taylor, "We Don't Need Another Hero," Black Frames: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema, Editors Mbye B. Cham and Claire Andrade-Watkins (Cambridge and London: the MIT Press, 1988).
4. Francisco X. Camplis, "Towards the Development of Raza Cinema (1975)," Chicanos and Film, pp. 284-302.
5. The various manifestos written by Latin American filmmakers are compiled in Cineaste 4.1 (Summer 1970), and 4.3 (Winter 1970-71).
6. Francisco X. Camplis, "Towards the Development of Raza Cinema (1975)," Chicanos and Film, pp. 299-300.
7. Jason C. Johansen's, "Notes on Chicano Cinema" was first published in the Chicano Cinema Coalition's newsletter and later in the La Opinion. It is reprinted in Chicanos and Film, pp. 303-307.
8. Jason C. Johansen's, "Notes on Chicano Cinema" Chicanos and Film, pp. 305-306.
9. Quoted in the anonymous essay, "Ya Basta Con Yankee Imperialist Documentaries," published in Cine Aztlan (1974) and reprinted in Chicanos and Film, pp. 275-283.
10. Francisco X. Camplis, "Towards the Development of Raza Cinema (1975)," Chicanos and Film, p. 297.
12. Gary Keller, "The Image of the Chicano in Mexican, United States and Chicano Cinema," Chicano Cinema, p. 47.
13. Chon Noriega, "Introduction: Chicanos and Film," Chicanos and Film, p. xxiii.
14. See Allen L. Woll, "Latin Images in American Films," Journal of Mexican History 4 (1974): 28-40; Arthur G. Pettit, Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1980) Carlos E. Cortes, "Chicanas in Film: A History of an Image," in Chicano Cinema, ed. Gary D. Keller, 1985.
15. Frances Salomé España communicate these ideas to me in the context of a discussion about her vision as a visual artist/filmmaker in the Spring of 1992.
16. Paul Willeman, "Introduction," Questions of Third Cinema, editors Jim Pines and Paul Willeman, British Film Institute, London, 1989, pp. 1-29; p. 12.
For more information regarding these articles and/or to submit an article yourself,
please contact Ethan van Thillo at sdlff@sdlatinofilm.com
San Diego Latino Film Festival,
c/o Media Arts Center San Diego,
2039 29th Street,
San Diego, CA 92104
TEL: 619.230.1938, FAX: 619.234.9722,
sdlff@sdlatinofilm.com, www.sdlatinofilm.com
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