Zoot Suit: Exploring Chicano Cultural Identity & Self-Representation on Film

Luis Valdez is widely recognized as “the father of Chicano theater and cinema” for amplifying the Chicano (Mexican-American) experience through his significant body of theatrical and cinematic work.

In ZOOT SUIT (1981,103 min), Valdez adapts his critically acclaimed Broadway musical to film, synthesizing two pivotal events in 1940s Los Angeles – the Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the subsequent Zoot Suit Riots – to illustrate their profound impact on the early Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Through this framework, the film foregrounds the Chicano experience as a crucial site for examining racialized state violence, cultural identity, and emergent political consciousness. 

In this class, we’ll explore the origins of Chicano Cinema and its interrelationship with the broader Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Additionally, we will analyze the film through the thematic lenses of cultural identity formation and self-representation, situating it within the sociopolitical and racial landscape of Los Angeles during World War II.

This class will be taught by Assistant MMU Instructor & Chicano Studies Advocate Michael Lampkin. 

Enrollment is limited to 18 students.

Questions? Email us at education@moviemadness.org