FILM/THEATRE

Alicia in Wonder Tierra, Or, I Can't Eat Goat Head

Loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, with a touch of The Wizard of Oz, the amazing adventures of young Alicia take her on a journey from a Mexican curio shop to an understanding of her national heritage. After tripping over some Mexican pottery, Alicia whirls off on a mystical journey to the Aztec temple to find the Pottery Maker who knows what becomes of the souls which have become trapped in Mexican vases. En route, she meets an armadillo, a Day of the Dead sugar skull, a soul brother cactus man and the Tree of Heads in this delightful adventure fantasy.

Cinema of Solitude

La crisis, a period of political and economic turmoil in Mexico that began in the late 1960s, spawned a new era in Mexican cinema. Known as el Nuevo Cine (the New Cinema), these films presented alienated characters caught in a painful transition period in which old family, gender, and social roles have ceased to function without being replaced by viable new ones. These are the films explored by Charles Ramírez Berg in Cinema of Solitude, the first book-length critical study of Mexican cinema in English. Berg discusses the major films and filmmakers of el Nuevo Cine in depth. He analyzes dozens of commercial movies, from popular comedies and adventures to award-winning films. Introductory chapters address the issue of mexicanidad (Mexican national identity) and outline Mexican history, the history of film as popular culture and as a leading national industry, and the ideological dynamics of Mexican cinema. In thematically arranged chapters, Berg investigates the images of women, men, and social structures portrayed in New Cinema films. He finds that women characters have begun to reject traditional stereotypes for more positive images, while male characters have grown ambiguous and undefined as machismo is abandoned. Other chapters trace the continuing marginalization of Indians in Mexican culture, the changes in male dominance within the family, and the disruptive social and economic effects caused by migration. For everyone interested in Mexican culture as reflected in its major cinematic productions, as well as students of film theory and national cinemas, this book will be important reading.

Eyewitness: A Filmmaker's Memoir of the Chicano Movement

Noted filmmaker Jesus Salvador Trevino participated in and documented the most important events in the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Coming of age during the turmoil of the sixties, Trevino recorded the struggles to organize students and workers into the largest social and political movement in the history of Latino communities in the United States.

Freak

Freak: a Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography is John Leguizamo's hilarious coming-of-age story. Set in various neighborhoods of Queens, New York, in the eras of disco and break-dancing, Freak recounts the turmoil and eccentricities within a Latino family struggling to make it. A domineering father, frustrated by his rocky quest for the American dream; a mother who finds feminism and the club scene when she tires of Pop's tight control; a pudgy, eager-to-please, easily manipulated younger brother; and John - who doesn't spare himself in telling the gory details of his teen years. Freak is the book adaptation of Leguizamo's comical and critically acclaimed one-man Broadway show. But Freak, the book, contains narrative that had to be cut from the show because of time restraints.

Heroes and Saints & Other Plays

Heroes and Saints & Other Plays is Chicana playwright Cherríe Moraga's premiere collection of theatre. Included are: Shadow of a Man, winner of the 1990 Fund for New American Plays Award; Heroes and Saints, winner of the Dramalogue, the PEN West, and the Critics Circle awards, as well as the Will Glickman Prize for Best Play of 1992; and Giving Up the Ghost, first published by West End Press in 1986, and now presented here in its revised stage version.

Hispanics and United States Film

In its role as handbook, Hispanics and United States Film provides the best single source of information on Hispanic personalities in American film and on American films with a Hispanic focus produced from 1896 to the present time. Hundreds of films, actors, and other figures of the film industry are referenced. This informational component of the book, which provides titles, dates, and other filmographic information, is supplemented by a bibliography on the subject.

Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media

What are “Latin looks”? A Latin look may seem at first blush to be something that everyone recognizes—brunette, sensual, expressive, animated, perhaps threatening. But upon reflection, we realize that these are the images that are prevalent in the media, while the reality in Latino communities is of a rich diversity of people and images. This book brings together a selection of the best, the most interesting, and the most analytically sophisticated writing on how Latinos have been portrayed in movies, television, and other media since the early years of the twentieth century and how images have changed over time in response to social and political change. Particular emphasis is given to representations of class, gender, color, race, and the political relationship between the United States and Latin America. Together the essays offer a corrective lens for interpreting how images are created, perpetuated, and manipulated.

Latinas on Stage

This comprehensive anthology for the first time presents the works of Latina playwrights and performance artists currently working in this country. Weaving together the myriad strands of the Latina community in the U.S.: Puerto Ricans, Afro-Carribbeans, Chicanas, Cubans, it contains the complete texts of eight plays, as well as interviews with writers and incisive critical essays situating these works in the larger context of our own cultural traditions. Includes a complete bibliography.

Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction

Los Angeles has long been a place where cultures clash and reshape. The city has a growing number of Latina/o authors and filmmakers who are remapping and reclaiming it through ongoing symbolic appropriation. In this illuminating book, Ignacio L—pez-Calvo foregrounds the emotional experiences of authors, implicit authors, narrators, characters, and readers in order to demonstrate that the evolution of the imaging of Los Angeles in Latino cultural production is closely related to the politics of spatial location. This spatial-temporal approach, he writes, reveals significant social anxieties, repressed rage, and deep racial guilt. Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction sets out to reconfigure the scope of Latino literary and cultural studies. Integrating histories of different regions and nations, the book sets the interplay of unresolved contradictions in this particular metropolitan area. The novelists studied here stem from multiple areas, including the U.S. Southwest, Guatemala, and Chile. The study also incorporates non-Latino writers who have contributed to the Latino culture of the city. The first chapter examines Latino cultural production from an ecocritical perspective on urban interethnic relations. Chapter 2 concentrates on the representation of daily life in the barrio and the marginalization of Latino urban youth. The third chapter explores the space of women and how female characters expand their area of operations from the domestic space to the public space of both the barrio and the city. A much-needed contribution to the fields of urban theory, race critical theory, Chicana/Latina/o studies, and Los Angeles writing and film, L—pez-Calvo offers multiple theoretical perspective including urban theory, ecocriticism, ethnic studies, gender studies, and cultural studies contextualized with notions of transnationalism and post-nationalism.

Luis Valdez-Early Works

Drama. EARLY WORKS: ACTOS, BERNABE AND PENSAMIENTO SERPENTINE is three books in one: 1) a collection of one act plays by Valdez and the famous farmworker theater, El Teatro Campesino, 2) one of the first fully realized, full-length plays by Valdez alone, and 3) an original narrative poem by Luis Valdez. In the first part are collected the original, improvised works of El Teatro Campesino that deal with the exploitation of Mexican farm labor in the California fields, the discrimination found by Mexicans in the schools, and Mexicans being turned into cannon fodder by the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Bernabe is a touching, Lorcaesque poetic drama about a town fool's enchantment and ultimate unity with the earth. Pensamiento serpentino is a long, philosophical poem, based on Mayan thought and cosmology, which analyzes the cultural, religious and political circumstances of Mexican Americans and prepares a metaphysical framework for their future.

Puro Teatro

From plays produced on shoestring budgets in the 1970s to today's high-tech performance pieces, Latina theater has emerged as a vibrant art form whose time has come. This anthology showcases this dynamic new genre through the works of established playwrights such as CherrÁe Moraga and Dolores Prida as well as talented new playwrights and performers who have emerged in the past decade such as Migdalia Cruz, Elaine Romero, and Monica Palacios. Puro Teatro, A Latina Anthology includes a variety of theatrical genres: plays, performance pieces, puppet shows, innovative collaborations, and testimonials. It features previously unpublished plays from a broad range of experiences within the Latino/a community, including families and home, friends and community building, coming of age and empowerment, and sexual and ethnic identities. The editors' introduction provides a comprehensive survey of contemporary Latina theater, placing it in its theatrical context and examining its divergent roots. Puro Teatro, A Latina Anthology is the first book of its kind to reflect in print a diversified body of writing that turns the spotlight on some of America's most talented and prolific artists. A subsequent volume will complement this anthology with a theoretical, critical reading of Latina theater and performance. CONTENTS Full Length Plays Bot‡nica by Dolores Prida Heart of the Earth: A Popul Vuh Story by Cherr’e Moraga The Fat-Free Chicana and the Snow Cap Queen by Elaine Romero One-act Plays Las nuevas tamaleras by Alicia Mena And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? by Silviana Wood Fuschia by Janis Astor del Valle Performance Pieces Nostalgia Maldita: 1-900-MEXICO : A StairMaster Piece by Yareli Arizmendi Good Grief, Lolita by Wilma Bonet A Roomful of Men by Amparo Garc’a Crow Describe Your Work by Monica Palacios Testimonials "Battle Worn," by Laura Esparza "Dancing with the Voice of Truth," by Mar’a Mar "Searching for Sanctuaries: Cruising through Town in a Red Convertible," by Diane Rodr’guez "Home, Desire, Memory: There Are No Borders Here," by Caridad Svich "Tales of a South-of-the-Border/North-of-the-Stereotype Theatre Director, by Susana Tubert "Catching the Next Play: The Joys and Perils of Playwriting," by Edit Villarreal Full-Length Plays, Collaborative Works Frida: The Story of Frida Kahlo by Migdalia Cruz and Hilary Blecher Memorias de la revoluci—n by Carmelita Tropicana and Uzi Parnes

Real Women Have Curves

Set in a tiny sewing factory in East L.A., this is the outrageously funny story of five full-figured Mexican-American women who are racing to meet nearly impossible production deadlines in order to keep their tiny factory from going under. And while they work, hiding from the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), they talk... about their husbands and lovers, their children and their dreams for the future. The story is told from the point of view of Ana, the youngest among them. Just graduated from high school, Ana dreams of getting out of the barrio and going off to college and becoming a famous writer. Although she needs money, Ana doesn't like working at the factory, and has little respect for the co-workers, who make fun of her ambitions and what they consider her idealistic feminist philosophies. However, Ana keeps coming to her job and chronicling here experiences in a journal. As the summer unfolds, she slowly gains an understanding and appreciation of the work and the women, eventually writing an essay that wins her a journalism fellowship which will take her to New York City. This play, a microcosm of the Latina immigrant experience, celebrates real women's bodies, the power of women, and the incredible bond that happens when women work together.

The New Latin American Cinema

During the 1967 festival of Latin American Cinema in Viña del Mar, Chile, a group of filmmakers who wanted to use film as an instrument of social awareness and change formed the New Latin American Cinema. Nearly three decades later, the New Cinema has produced an impressive body of films, critical essays, and manifestos that uses social theory to inform filmmaking practices.This book explores the institutional and aesthetic foundations of the New Latin American Cinema. Zuzana Pick maps out six areas of inquiry—history, authorship, gender, popular cinema, ethnicity, and exile—and explores them through detailed discussions of nearly twenty films and their makers, including Camila (María Luisa Bemberg), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), and Frida (Paul Leduc). These investigations document how the New Latin American Cinema has used film as a tool to change society, to transform national expressions, to support international differences, and to assert regional autonomy.

The Panza Monologues

The Panza Monologues is an original solo performance piece based on women's stories about their panzas—tú sabes—that roll of belly we all try to hide. Written, compiled, and collected by Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga and fashioned into a tour-de-force solo performance, The Panza Monologues features the words of Chicanas speaking with humor and candor. Their stories boldly place the panza front and center as a symbol that reveals the lurking truths about women's thoughts, lives, loves, abuses, and living conditions.This second edition of The Panza Monologues presents the performance script in its entirety, as well as a rich supporting cast of dramaturgical and pedagogical materials. These include a narrative history of the play’s development by the playwrights; critical materials that enhance and expand upon the script’s themes and ideas (a short introduction to San Antonio, where the play was developed; playwright autogeographies; and a manifesto on women of color making theater); and a selection of pedagogical and creative ideas, including guidelines and advice for staging a production of the play and for teaching it in the classroom, community-making activities (screenings, hosting “Panza Parties,” community/group discussions), and creative writing activities connected to the play.

The Works of John Leguizamo

John Leguizamo's smash–hit one–man shows have been acclaimed by critics and fans alike. In this new Harper Paperback edition, all four shows are compiled into one phenomenally entertaining volume. Mambo Mouth (1991), Leguizamo's first show, was an off Broadway sensation. Leguizamo's portrayal of seven different Latino characters earned him both Obie and Outer Critics Circle awards. His follow up, Spic–O–Rama (1993), a "dysfunctional family comedy," presents 24–hours in the life of one family. It enjoyed a sold–out run in Chicago before relocating to New York where it won its creator a Drama Desk Award. Freak (1998), Leguizamo's Broadway debut, is his own coming–of–age story. A "demi–semi–quasi–pseudo–autobiography," the show was a critical and commercial success and won an Emmy when it was shown on TV. Sexaholix: A Love Story (2001), based on the sold–out national tour of John Leguizamo Live! was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award as well as a Tony Award. Alternately hilarious and poignant, always candid and searingly intelligent, The Works of John Leguizamo is a must–have for fans of this inimitable performer.

Zoot Suit & Other Plays

This collection contains three of playwright and screenwriter Luis Valdez's most important and recognized plays: Zoot Suit, Bandido! and I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges. The anthology also includes an introduction by noted theater critic Dr. Jorge Huerta of the University of California-San Diego. Luis Valdez, the most recognized and celebrated Hispanic playwright of our times, is the director of the famous farm-worker theater, El Teatro Campesino.

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