Sundance double prize-winning documentary American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, the story of the groundbreaking Chicano activist and director, opens at Film Forum in NYC. Friday night’s screening — with Valdez, director David Alvarado and Lou Diamond Phillips — is sold out, and the weekend looks strong for the rare film of any size to debut with The Odyssey juggernaut.
The doc, which took the Sundance Festival Favorite Award and the Audience Award for U.S. documentary, celebrates the pioneering stage and screen director of Zoot Suit and La Bamba, who provided a platform for Chicano voices in the face of political resistance and industry skepticism. It was the first-place winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize.
Pachucos, as per Valdez, are Mexican-American “street cats with style.”
Producer Insignia Films with booking support from mTuckman Media will expand the film to a dozen theaters in Los Angeles next week including Laemmle and AMC locations, Maya Cinemas, Alamo Drafthouse, Vidiots and more, with Dolores Huerta, labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers union on hand. On July 31, it heads to San Francisco’s Roxie Theater (opening is sold out), Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, Rialto Elmwood Theater in Berkeley, Alamo Mountain View and Valley Fair in South Bay/San Jose.
Alvarado (The Immortalists, Bill Nye: Science Guy) and Valdez will join in-person conversations during opening weekend in L.A. and San Francisco as well as NYC. The film is booked into September for runs in more than 20 cities including Dallas, Austin, Houston, Chicago and Tucson.
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Born in Delano, CA, in 1940, Valdez wrote his first plays in grammar school and had the first produced as a student at San Jose State University, going on to create El Teatro Campesino, the artistic arm of United Farm Workers, helping to inspire a broader Chicano theater movement. His play Zoot Suit premiered in L.A. in 1978, and he became the first Chicano director to have a play presented on Broadway the following year. He wrote and directed the hit 19876 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba. Both were selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Narrated by Edward James Olmos in character as El Pachuco, the master of ceremonies he played in Zoot Suit, the doc features Valdez, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lupe Valdez, Cheech Marin, Linda Ronstadt, Taylor Hackford and Rose Portillo.
Italian drama The Kidnapping of Arabella by Caroline Cavalli opens at the IFC Center in NYC. From Oscilloscope, it stars Benedetta Porcaroli, Lucrezia Guglielmino and Chris Pine. Cavalli and Pine are doing Q&As Friday and Saturday. Porcaroli, who won the Venice Orizzonti’s Best Actress Award when the film premiered, is a 28-year-old who runs away with a girl she believes to be a younger version of herself.
Jack Black-produced pirate radio documentary 40 Watts from Nowhere by Susan Carpenter opens at DCTV via Factory 25. The film follows KBLT, the legendary pirate radio station in Los Angeles in the ‘90s that was based in Carpenter’s L.A. apartment and championed by musician DJs including Mike Watt (The Minutemen), Keith Morris (Black Flag, The Circle Jerks) and Don Bolles (The Germs).
Frustrated by what she was hearing on commercial radio, Carpenter, a 28-year-old secretary and aspiring journalist, built a 40-watt FM station and invited strangers into her house to spin what they wanted. It took off, drawing Mazzy Star to headline a benefit concert and Red Hot Chili Peppers to play live in her living room. Screenings are upcoming in L.A. and a handful of other markets.
Telluride-premiering Summer Tour from Utopia opens at the IFC Center in NY and the Laemmle NuArt in L.A. on Friday ahead of nationwide event screenings July 23. The doc by Mischa Richter follows a young couple, Jerry and Annie, as they chase Dead & Company’s final 2023 tour in a questionable camper van, organizing their lives around the music.
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the 2001 South Korean classic romcom My Sassy Girl by Kwak Jae-young has a new 4K restoration and re-release from Film Movement starting Saturday at the Courthouse Theater at the Anthology Film Archives as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.
Jeong Jae-eun’s Korean coming-of-age cult favorite Take Care of My Cat also is getting a 25th-anniversary 4K re-release at the Metrograph in New York courtesy of Kani Releasing.