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“Friendship and Collaboration Beyond Borders”: Chicano Art at the 24th Morelia International Film Festival

Omar Sosa

As part of the 24th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival, the dialogue “Friendship and Collaboration Beyond Borders: Photography, Art, and Documentary Cinema” took place. The event featured filmmaker, curator, and American scholar Jesse Lerner, and Jim “Jimmy” Mendiola, a Chicano filmmaker and educator. This conversation served as a platform for a discussion on the history, contradictions, and current landscape of Chicano visual arts and cinema.

Lerner opened the discussion by sharing the background behind the contemporary Chicano art exhibition he co-curated with Mexican artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum in Mexico City, an exhibition that recently came to an end after welcoming 400,000 visitors. He pointed out that, despite the museum’s long history and the more than 40 million people of Mexican origin living in the United States, the venue had never hosted an exhibition of Chicano art because of the tensions it creates within the traditional nationalist narrative. 

“The Palacio de Bellas Artes is not only Mexico’s most important art museum, but also a profoundly nationalist space [...]. All kinds of questions arose: how Chicanos might be situated within this narrative, and whether there is a place for them in it at all,” commented Lerner. According to him, the exhibition aimed to dismantle the stereotype that reduces Chicano art solely to figurative painting or classical muralism, instead highlighting and bringing together artists from younger generations trained across a wide range of disciplines, including sculpture, video art, digital photography, and conceptual installations.

The curator highlighted the section titled “Transtemporalidades”, a thematic axis that questions linear understandings of time by weaving together the pre-Hispanic past with science fiction, popular culture, and the lowrider movement. As a complement to the exhibition, Lerner organized a retrospective at the Cineteca Nacional that ranged from silent films to migration-themed documentaries and fiction feature films. Among the films screened was Pretty Vacant (1996), Jim Mendiola’s first Super 8 production.  

Mendiola then reflected on the challenges of defining Chicano identity in the present day. “As a person of Mexican descent working in Chicano cinema, I return to my land of origin and speak in English, which raises many contradictions and compelling questions,” Mendiola observed. Drawing on his roots in San Antonio, he situated his identity within Américo Paredes’s concept of “Greater Mexico,” which understands the border as a historically porous zone shaped by continuous cultural and human exchange.

In order to illustrate the diverse ways Chicanos have been represented in film, the filmmakers screened a selection of audiovisual excerpts, including Frontera sangrienta [Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive!] (1976) by Efraín Gutiérrez; Chulas Fronteras (1976) by Les Blank;  Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie (1980) by Tommy Chong; and a memorable scene from Selena (1997) by Gregory Nava, before closing with sequences from their own work.

After the screenings, Mendiola and Lerner discussed how Chicano filmmaking has evolved over time. When asked whether the term remains relevant today, Mendiola responded: “When I say that there is no such thing as Chicano cinema, what I mean is that it does not exist in the uniform and monolithic sense people tend to imagine it [...]. The landscape of Latino filmmakers has become far more complex.” He emphasized that younger generations, although they do not always embrace the Chicano label because of limited exposure to its history, remain committed to exploring contemporary political realities and the shared challenges that shape life on both sides of the border.

Both panelists highlighted Efraín Gutiérrez as a key example of self-managed production and independent distribution in San Antonio during the 1970s. They also recognized the cinematographic contributions of his wife, Josie Faz, and her remarkable achievement of filling theaters outside commercial distribution networks. 

As the event drew to a close, Mendiola revealed that he is currently working on a personal essay documentary about his return to San Antonio's West Side. He concluded by noting that the emotional, artistic, and cultural bonds between Mexico and its diaspora continue to find one of their most fertile meeting grounds in visual experimentation.