Chicanos and Film
Representation and Resistance
A groundbreaking work. Fills the gap between critical studies in film and Mexican American cultural studies.
Marsha Kinder
To date, Chicano and Latino representation and participation in the American film industry have been largely ignored by film scholars. Genre criticism has been particularly oblivious to the presence of Chicanos in genres that have, at times, been constructed around a Chicano or Chicana “other”—Westerns, social problem films, and the more recent urban violence film.
In Chicanos and Film, Chon A. Noriega has gathered the work of scholars who have been instrumental in the development of Chicano film studies. The contributors explore Chicano representation in both Hollywood and Mexican cinema and the resistance encountered within studio production, the press, and countercinema. Ultimately, Chicanos and Film offers a provocative examination of the historic, textual, and critical issues at the nexus of Chicano studies and film studies, brilliantly revealing how film illuminates social history and how artifacts of expressive culture draw their determinate shape from social and political realities.
Contributors: Mario Barrera, Charles Ramíriz Berg, Francisco X. Camplis, Cine-Aztlán, Carlos E. Cortés, Rosa Linda Fregoso,Víctor Fuentes, Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Carmen Huaco-Nuzum, Jason C. Johansen, José E. Limón, Christine List, David R. Maciel, Sylvia Morales, Ray Navarro,William Anthony Nericcio, Kathleen Newman, Chon Noriega, Antonio Ríos-Bustamante, David Rosen, Alex M. Saragoza, and Victor Valle.
A groundbreaking work. Fills the gap between critical studies in film and Mexican American cultural studies.
Marsha Kinder
Noriega has done a commendable job of organizing the disparate visions and emphases of the essays; the result provides insight into the practice of criticism but also contextualizes the practice within the wider American social reality. Noriega’s collection of essays is essential to research and indispensable to any graduate course, in the areas of Chicano film or popular culture. All twenty-two essays are exceptional and necessary pieces for anyone teaching or researching Chicano cinema. Each essay contributes conceptually and critically to an understanding of the obligations of Chicano film and filmmakers. Noriega has done well in choosing authors, topics, and essays. While it may be premature to label this collections a masterpiece, Chicanos and Film is nothing short of definitive.
Text and Performance Quarterly
