People may best remember director and screenwriter Luis Valdez as the maker of the 1987 biographical drama La Bamba, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Chicano rock and roll star Ritchie Valens. But Valdez is also regarded as a founder of Chicano theater and a pioneer of the Chicano movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Growing up as one of ten children to Mexican migrant farmworkers, he was originally set to become an engineer like his older brother. But by his sophomore year of college, Valdez had switched his major to English and was writing scathing satirical plays about the experiences of Mexican Americans and the racism and prejudice they face. This earned him the title “pachuco,” which refers to the zoot-suit-wearing, caló-speaking youth of a 1930s Mexican American counterculture that rejected assimilation into Anglo American society. Narrated by Edward James Olmos, American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez uses archival footage and interviews with such Chicano icons as Dolores Huerta, Rose Portillo, and Cheech Marin to highlight Valdez’s lasting impact on American history. BD

Q&A following screening