Geoffrey Dunn and Mark Schwartz Direct: A Dollar a Day, 10¢ a Dance
In 1986, the media was swamped with reports of Philippine turmoil and the eventual ouster of Ferdinand Marcos. But here, in the United States and more specifically, the Monterey Bay area, Geoffrey Dunn and Mark Schwartz were completing a documentary about the "forgotten story" of Filipino-American farm workers. Lured by dreams of fortune, 100,000 Filipinos-mostly young men-migrated to the United States in the '20s and '30s. What they found was not the open coffers and endless opportunity of the American dream, but discrimination, a depression-era economy, and due to the lack of Filipino women, bachelorhood. Manongs, the first generation immigrants, tell their stories of the low pay, uncertain employment, harsh working conditions and housing discrimination that greeted them. A Dollar a Day punctuates the old timers' stories with historic black-and-white photographs and occasional film clips of the struggles these veterans describe. Racial tensions of this early immigrant period culminated in the Watsonville riots of 1930, when Filipino worker Fermin Tobera, 22, was murdered by an angry mob. In later years, Filipino-Americans were instrumental in supporting agricultural strikes which led to the formation of the United Farm Workers. Ironically, many of these Filipinos had left their ancestral farms in search of pleasure and prosperity. Little did they know that the farmlands of America awaited them.

Luis Valdez Directs: Zoot Suit
“What you are about to see is a combination of fact and fantasy. Weigh the facts and enjoy the pretense,” El Pachuco exhorts the film/play audience of the filmed-play, Zoot Suit. El Pachuco: sinister hero, alter ego and apotheosis of cool for every Chicano kid; narrator and stage manager (à la “Our Town”-nuestro barrio) throughout Luis Valdez's energetic Brechtian musical. Valdez makes no pretense to realism-Zoot Suit has three alternative endings-but his film is one of the “truest” to emerge in recent years, and possibly the most reflective ever of Chicano sensibilities. Valdez weaves a setting around Chicano myths and stereotypes-for men, the zoot-suited Pachuco and the ‘38 Chevy; for women, the flowery, full skirted, greeting card romance and the ‘38 Chevy; for both, la familia. Then there is reality-a plot, of sorts: it's the summer of ‘42, at the height of wartime jingoism, when a murder at Sleepy Lagoon brought on the arrest of 600 Pachucos, the trial of 22 and life sentences for 12. Among the latter group is Henry Reyna, whose story is chronicled by Valdez in a distanced, stagey, highly stylized manner; no more tears, it's time to analyze. Zoot Suit is great musical theater on film.