"Visions of Aztlán" Special Screening

Born in El Paso, writer and filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño is the winner of numerous international film awards including two from the Directors Guild of America. Treviño was Co-Executive Producer of the four-part PBS documentary series Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement and he is the author of three short story collections and a memoir, Eyewitness: A Filmmaker’s Memoir of the Chicano Movement. In 2023 Mr. Treviño began donating his literary papers to the Wittliff Collections to inspire further research and study. For further information about Mr. Treviño and his career, visit his website: www.chuytrevino.com.  

Visions of Aztlán chronicles the emergence of Chicano and Chicana artists and explores how their art evolved a visual language inspired by key events, organizations and ideology of the emergent Chicano civil rights movement. The film also shows how these art works and imagery, in turn, were used by activists to further propel a sense of identity and politics within the Chicano movimiento and set the stage for the emergence of a new phenomenon in American art. At a time when Latinos still grapple with questions of identity, the Chicano art movement persists as a profound example of how one community added to the definition of what it means to be American by expressing their unique differences through artistic expressions. 

Visions of Aztlán includes interviews with artists César Martínez, Carmen Lomas Garza, Santa Barraza, Kathy Vargas, John Valadez, Malaquias Montoya, Judy Baca, Jose Montoya, and several more. The film was written and directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño. The Director of Photography is Armando Acevedo. The original music score was composed and performed by Germaine Franco.