Daniel Valdez

The first Chicano play performed on Broadway, Luis Valdez's ground-breaking masterpiece uses the Sleepy Lagoon murder case to examine the Zoot Suit culture of the 1940s. Henry Reyna and the 38th Street Gang are discriminated against and tried for murder after a fight breaks out a party. Passionate and provocative, Zoot Suit pulses with the beat of a big band music and traditional Latin songs.

After being fired from his job, Guillermo and his wife Silvana decide to move to the countryside with their daughter Romina. Along the way, they stop at a farm where they are welcomed by Bjorn, an eccentric Swede. The host's lifestyle awakens a certain "flower power" nostalgia in the couple, evoking fond memories of their youth. What they don't know is that they are being "captured" by a cult.

After her 27th birthday, Silvia Prieto decides to take charge of her life and make some changes. At the same time, she suddenly finds herself intertwined in the life of another woman who is also named Silvia Prieto.

Twelve-year-old Mexican-American Marcos (Jose Alcala) recalls the hardships of the previous year, reflecting on the arduous trek his migrant-worker family made from Texas to the Midwest during harvest season. Along the way, Marcos learns plenty about the harsh realities of bigotry and the power of family in America of the 1950s. The coming-of-age Chicano drama is based on Tomas Rivera's semiautobiographical 1971 novella.

A young man is scammed by an engineer and an ex-hippie who promise to sell a glue that binds any surface he had invented and goes on a journey to the planet of the hippies

Los Angeles teenager Ritchie Valens becomes an overnight rock 'n' roll success in 1958, thanks to a love ballad called "Donna" that he wrote for his girlfriend. But as his star rises, Valens has conflicts with his jealous brother, Bob, and becomes haunted by a recurring nightmare of a plane crash just as he begins his first national tour alongside Buddy Holly.

Rudy, an American of Hispanic descent, whose south-of-the-border looks show him no mercy during an immigration raid in a migrant worker factory. As his luck goes, he is caught with neither money nor his ID and is deported to Mexico - without speaking a word of Spanish!

Part fact and part fiction, Zoot Suit is the film version of Luis Valdez's critically acclaimed play, based on the actual Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the zoot suit riots of 1940s Los Angeles. Henry Reyna is the leader of a group of Mexican-Americans being sent to San Quentin without substantial evidence for the death of a man at Sleepy Lagoon. As part of the defense committee, Alice Bloomfield and George Shearer fight the blatant miscarriage of justice for the freedom of Henry and his friends.

Corridos! Tales of Passion and Revolution is a one-hour celebration of Mexican-American music and culture. Long before television and radio, ‘Los Corridos’ were the singing voice of the people along, above and below the two thousand-mile U.S. Mexican border.

This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.

While doing a series of reports on alternative energy sources, opportunistic reporter Kimberly Wells witnesses an accident at a nuclear power plant. Wells is determined to publicize the incident, but soon finds herself entangled in a sinister conspiracy to keep the full impact of the incident a secret.

Orange picker Leroy Jones inadvertently becomes a union leader and is forced out of town, leaving behind his sex-obsessed father, Rufus, and timid spouse, Annie Mae. He heads for Los Angeles, where he falls for union organizer Vanetta. Annie Mae seeks solace from local preacher Lenox Thomas, who eventually impregnates her. When Leroy catches wind, he heads home for a showdown with Lenox.

A 1972 television adaptation of Los Vendidos, a one-act play by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez, a founding member of El Teatro Campesino. The play examines and dramatizes stereotypes of Mexican Americans in California and how they are treated by local, state, and federal governments.

The film stars Felix Alvarez as Jesus Pelado Rasquachi, a young Mexican man who travels to the United States in search of work, suffering various unfortunate and comical events along the way.