EXCLUSIVE: American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, the award-winning documentary about the acclaimed playwright and filmmaker, will begin its theatrical run July 17 at Film Forum in New York City.

The film directed by David Alvarado will expand the following week to Los Angeles (at Laemmle, AMC, Maya Cinemas, Alamo Drafthouse and more), and on July 31 in San Francisco and other locations in the Bay Area (Roxie Theater, Smith Rafael in San Rafael, Rialto Elmwood Theater in Berkeley, plus Alamo Mountain View and Valley Fair in the South Bay/San Jose Area). mTuckman media (No Other Land, Steal This Story Please!) is handling the theatrical release, which will see American Pachuco play in more than 20 cities total, including Dallas, Austin, Houston, Chicago, and Tucson. Along with with the LA area and Bay Area, American Pachuco will open theatrically in numerous California locations, among them San Diego, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield, Salinas, and Fresno.

The documentary, which won both the Festival Favorite Award and the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary at Sundance, “chronicles how writer/playwright/director Luis Valdez illuminated the Mexican American experience on stage and screen and transformed the American cultural landscape,” according to a release. “Born in Delano, California in 1940, Valdez wrote his first plays in grammar school, had his first play produced when he was a student at San Jose State University, and created El Teatro Campesino alongside the United Farm Workers, helping to inspire a broader Chicano theater movement.”

In 1979, Valdez became the first Chicano director to have a play mounted on Broadway with his work Zoot Suit, which was later adapted into a feature film starring Edward James Olmos and Tyne Daly. In 1987, Valdez wrote and directed La Bamba, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as singer Ritchie Valens, a film that became a cultural sensation.

American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez won the prestigious Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film earlier this year. We have your first look at the documentary in the trailer above.

“I was 21 when I heard Luis Valdez speak, and it rearranged what I thought was possible for my life,” commented director David Alvarado. “Twenty years later, putting his story on the big screen is the best way I know to pay that forward. This film is about who gets to be American, and a movie theater is one of the last rooms in this country where strangers still sit together in a room and experience something new and something wonderful. Everybody in that room belongs.”

Alvarado (Bill Nye: Science Guy, The Immortalists) added, “Luis Valdez built El Teatro Campesino on the back of a flatbed truck, performing for farmworkers in the towns where this film will now play. Booking theaters in Salinas, Fresno, and Bakersfield mattered to us as much as booking the Film Forum in New York City. Luis has spent 60 years proving that Chicanos aren’t on the margins of the American story. We are the American story.”

American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez is a co-production of Insignia Films, ITVS, Latino Public Broadcasting and Firelight Media in association with American Masters, PBS, and Ford Foundation Just Films. Funding was also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, California Humanities, The Better Angels Society, and PBS Distribution.

The documentary is written, directed, and produced by David Alvarado, and produced by Lauren DeFilippo, Everett Katigbak and Amanda Pollak. Executive producers include Stephen Ives, Michael Kantor, Loira Limbal, Carrie Lozano, Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith, and Sandie Viquez Pedlow. The film is edited by Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros, with cinematography by Zachary Fink and original score by Eduardo Arenas. 

Along with Valdez, the film features Edward James Olmos, Dolores Huerta, Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Taylor Hackford, and Linda Ronstadt, among others. It is narrated by Olmos in character as El Pachuco (the character he originally portrayed in Zoot Suit).

Watch the trailer for American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez above.

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