In The News
San Antonio Current – “Lucharan!”
by Roberto Ontiveros, Cover Story on “Rudos y Tecnicos” performance and art happening at Gallista Gallery, 2010:
When I get to Joe Lopez’s Gallista Gallery — a Southside art space Lopez downplays as rustic but strikes me as alive with color and culture — I encounter three artists drinking beer and listening to an oldies station. They’re building a platform for an upcoming art show/performance/wrestling extravaganza. Rudos y Tecnicos will feature roughly a dozen local painters and performers, many of whom are already training with Westside lucha libre wrestlers. The December 11 event will pit San Antonio-based artists against masked representations of war, domestic violence, homophobia, and DREAM Act-resisting Kay Bailey Hutchison.
https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/lucharan/Content?oid=2289516
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OC Register – “Santa Ana Film Festival Starts Saturday”
by Theresa Cisneros, Story on the first annual OC Film Fiesta in Santa Ana, 2010:
SANTA ANA — Santa Ana is home to an increasingly diverse population, comprised of English speakers, Spanish speakers, newcomers, longtime residents and thousands of others.
Artist Sandra Peña Sarmiento hopes to unite all of them through her latest project — a 15-day film festival being held in conjunction with Fiestas Patrias, an annual city celebration commemorating Mexican Independence Day.
“I wanted to find something that would appeal to all of our communities and create an intersection of discourse and dialogue,” said Sarmiento, a filmmaker/artist/writer who was raised in Santa Ana. “And I’ve always found that cinema is the best way to do this.”
https://www.ocregister.com/2010/09/03/santa-ana-film-festival-starts-saturday/
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MySanAntonio – “Cinefestival? Yes we Wilmer!”
by Jim Kiest, Notice on the Cinefestival film festival guest appearance by Wolmer Valderrama, 2009:
Arts writer Elda Silva sends this post on the upcoming Cinefestival:
The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center has announced the lineup for the 31st CineFestival en San Antonio. The Latino film festival will run Feb. 5-8 at the Guadalupe Theater.
Titles screening include “Days of Wrath,” which festival co-director Sandra Peña-Sarmiento describes as a breakout film for actor Wilmer Valderrama, a k a Fez of “That ’70s Show” fame and the voice of the title character in the animated kiddie show “Handy Manny.”
https://blog.mysanantonio.com/weekender/2009/01/cinefestival-yes-we-wilmer/
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La Prensa San Diego – “Seven Year Boycott of San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la Raza Ends”
by La Prensa Editor, Report on the end of the historic boycott on the Centro, 2007:
The seven-year-old boycott of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, San Diego’s historic Chicano/a community arts center, has ended after the adoption by popular vote of a comprehensive and dynamic boycott resolution agreement.
The Save Our Centro Coalition, initiators of the boycott, announced the end of the boycott on April 21 at the 37th annual Chicano Park Day celebration in Barrio Logan. The announcement came after 18 months of negotiations between representatives of the Centro’s Board of Trustees and the Save Our Centro Coalition.
As a result of the negotiations, which were mediated by a team from the National Conflict Resolution Center, a boycott resolution agreement was adopted which guaranteed the addition of SOCC members to the Centro Board, re-established the Centro’s Arts Advisory Committee, created a Community Advisory Council and enacted several new policies to address perceived conflict of interest issues and to stimulate transparency and community participation in the Centro.
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2007/may11-07/centro.htm
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La Prensa San Diego – “Luchador Poetry, Paintings & Piledrivers in Balboa Park”
by Michael Klam, A report on the “Rudos y Technicos” show at the Museum of the Living Artist, 2006:
In wrestling, as in life, you can be a rudo or a técnico… and sometimes both. A técnico is the good guy who plays by the rules, sort of like the shimmering, spur-jingling cowboy in the white hat.
And the rudo does not play fair. He can be the underhanded evildoer. He cheats and is both hated and loved for his devilish deeds: Try to imagine something like fellow luchadores, The Flea and Dr. Terrifico, employing the “Super Rudo Under the Cheek Sneak” move, which makes a POOT noise in your spine!
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2006/august11-06/luchador.htm
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La Prensa San Diego – “The Self-Help Graphics Crisis”
by Sandra Pena-Sarmiento, A report comparing cultural center dysfunction in Los Angeles and San Diego, 2005:
Early Rumblings
The warning signs began early, slowly trickling in while I was Director of Programming for the 2004 San Diego Latino Film Festival. I had set up a deal to license the artwork of Los Angeles based artist/activist Alfredo de Batuc for the 2005 Festival. In March of 2005, while the festival was in full swing, De Batuc came down to promote his work. I showed him the local sights: the murals at Chicano Park, Chicano Perk Café and Adams Ave. We spoke of community art spaces, in particular, the situation at San Diego’s Centro Cultural de La Raza.
Five years after a new administration employed draconian measures that resulted in a rift between the Centro and the local community, the organization was largely absent from the local art scene. Both Alfredo and I had visited the site in its heyday, and we lamented its spiral downward.
De Batuc spoke of the problems of many organizations throughout the nation, all started 30+ years before, and facing the challenge of maintaining their viability without choking off the vision of its participating artists. Without the artists, the centers had no creative resources to fundraise with, no stellar shows to publicize, no audience base of adoring art patrons to provide a revenue base. He began to tell me about similar problems at Self-Help Graphics, that started after its founder, Sister Karen passed away. Her assistant, Tomas Benitez became the new Executive Director, even though it was not a title he had actively sought out. The role of ED at any institution in this age of budget cuts and lack of federal funding, was certainly a heavy one to bear.
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/july08-05/graphics.htm
Community comes together for the Self-Help Graphics. Photo by Harry Gamboa Jr.
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Cal State LA – “East of the River”
curated by Chon Noriega, Art Show notice in Los Angeles, 2000:
Avant-garde film and video shorts
7:00 p.m. at the Maxwell Theater, University-Student Union, Cal State L.A.
Chicano Visions is a series of ground-breaking film and video shorts by Chicano filmmakers and visual artists, representing four strands of Chicano experimental work since the early 1980s: conceptual dramas, testimonios, postmodern explorations of media, and domestic and border cultures. Included are works by Danny Acosta, Laura Aguilar, Frances Salome Espana, Harry Gamboa Jr., Juan Garza, Berta Jottar, Ana Machado, Pocha Pena, and Willie Varela. The program will be introduced with words from program curator, Chon Noriega (Associate Professor, Critical Studies Program, Department of Film and Television, UCLA). Sponsored by the L.A. Freewaves 7th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts throughout Los Angeles County during the month of November.
http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/newsrel/chicanopr.htm
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“Shot in America” book by Chon Noriega
– “The Pocha Manifesto” by Pocha Peña, A manifesto about the place of women of color in TV & Cinema, 2000:
One of the most influential figures in ethnic media studies takes direct aim at how Chicano filmmaking has been represented in the history of media in the United States. Shot in America tackles seemingly intractable dilemmas involving the political and market functions of film and TV to provide a definitive response to the debates over cultural and racial identity that have embroiled media and cultural studies over the past two decades.
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US Latinos and the Media: Theory and Practice
by Chon A. Noriega, Guest Editor
from Jump Cut, no. 39, June 1994, pp. 57-58
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1994, 2006
Finally, in “Pocha Manifesto #1,” Sandra Peña-Sarmiento reclaims and redefines the Mexican derogation pocha as the socio-aesthetic principle for a new generation of Chicana filmmakers, artists and writers. Interestingly, at about the same time that Peña-Sarmiento started producing video art under the banner of Pocha Productions, Chicano Secret Service, a comedy group comprised of three recent UC-Berkeley graduates, began to self-publish Pocho Magazine, an irreverent send up of both Chicano and mainstream cultures. In 1993, the group conducted an elaborate media hoax, promoting a State of the Pocho (STOP) Summit hosted by the National Pochismo Institute (NPI). The announcement appeared in Hispanic Magazine, among other places.[3] In her manifesto, Peña-Sarmiento identifies the cultural and gender biases that operate within both the Chicano community and the national culture.
https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC39folder/Latinos2Intro.html
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