Introduced by Rosa Linda Fregoso Rosa Linda Fregoso is the author of The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. She teaches Chicana/o studies and women's studies at the University of California at Davis. In Hollywood films, the often interchangeable image of Mexican and Mexican American is traditionally that of the "other," whether exoticised, criminalized, or patronized. The silent so-called "greaser" films (1908 to 1918) portrayed the persistent stereotype of the violent "greaser" who roamed the Southwest during the period of border conflict between 1848 and 1930 (New Mexico and Arizona became states in 1912). These movies also offered an image of the redeemed-but still marginalized and ridiculed-"good greaser" as a prescription for Chicanos, as Chon A. Noriega, editor of Chicanos and Film, notes. Tonight we present: Greaser's Gauntlet (D. W. Griffith, 1908, c. 15 mins), in which a Mexican man who ventures north is saved from a lynching by an Anglo heroine; Licking the Greasers (Francis Ford, 1914, c. 27 mins), a Shorty Hamilton western in which Shorty runs guns for Mexican revolutionaries; and Broncho Billy and the Greaser (Broncho Billy Anderson, 1914, c. 15 mins, From EmGee), in which Broncho Billy's Mexican wife Lolita attempts to run off with her Mexican lover. (Silent, B&W, 16mm, From Library of Congress except as noted) Trial (Mark Robson, USA, 1955) A second subgenre of Chicano-oriented films is the social problem film of the thirties to the sixties. Trial is a particularly fascinating example for its anti-Communist subtheme. The trial of a Chicano adolescent on a trumped-up rape-murder charge becomes a political football between Communists and racial bigots in a Southern California town. Glenn Ford is the law professor whose cynical partner on the case (Arthur Kennedy) intends on making a martyr of the boy to raise money for the Communist Party. Of course it could be said that the novel and movie did the same, lacing a story of justice for Mexican Americans with the prevailing anti-Red preoccupation, for a predictable big box-office response.