Screening and Q&A: "Yo Soy Chicano"

Filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño will join Chon Noriega, director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, for a post-screening conversation. Introduction by UCLA Film & Television Archive Collections Archivist Michael Pazmino.

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Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive>

Yo Soy Chicano

U.S., 8/14/1972

Considered to be the first Chicano-produced documentary highlighting the Mexican American experience to be televised nationally, Yo Soy Chicano paints a striking picture of the Chicano struggle throughout history—from its roots in the pre-Columbian era to the widespread activism for social and political empowerment of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Producer and writer Jesús Salvador Treviño utilizes interviews, re-enactments and archival footage to counteract the widespread Chicano-focused educational films at the time, which were non-Chicano productions and explicitly misrepresented the history of Mexican Americans. The resulting breakthrough documentary provides a radical historical framework that resonated with Chicanx people across the nation and brought the Chicano struggle to the foreground of American history.

Program note by Michael Pazmino. Program curated by Mark Quigley, John H. Mitchell Television Curator.

Color, in English and Spanish with English subtitles, 60 min. KCET. Producer-writer: Jesús Salvador Treviño. Director-editor: Barry Nye. Narrator: Victor Millan. Music: Daniel Valdez and El Teatro Campesino Cultural.

Preserved from original 2 in. videotape at CBS Media Exchange. Special thanks to KCETLink.

This is a one-time live screening organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and co-sponsored by the CSRC.

To view the recorded post-screening discussion, visit the UCLA Film and Television Archive Vimeo channel.