The Evening Class: Oddball Films””This Is For The Raza: Brown and Proud!

“Attended this program with Michael Hawley. Oddball Films Director Stephen Parr joined forces with L.A. filmmaker Jesse Lerner to curate a program of films devoted to the Chicano experience. While the audience gathered, Parr played border tech music and screened Kodachrome Mexican home movies from the 1940s involving scenes from Mexico City, Taxco, among others. The surefire winners from this batch were scenes from the floating gardens of Xocimilco and a litter of adorable piglets.

These appetizers were followed by a 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica group portrait: The Mexican American Speaks: Heritage in Bronze. Naí¯ve in its ambition to introduce the average American to mestizaje and the burgeoning social role of Mexican-Americans, the Britannica vehicle took me back to the educational films I used to watch in junior high school. It carried a taint of assimilation even as it suggested parity.”

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