Purchase DVDs (coming soon)

For over a decade filmmaker John J. Valadez searched for the remains of Joaquin Murrieta, a legendary Mexican outlaw who blazed a trail of revenge across California until he was caught and decapitated in the summer of 1853. A hundred and sixty-two years later Valadez believes he has the head. So he embarks on a quixotic, cross-country road trip through history, myth and memory to bury the fabled head of Joaquin Murrieta. Along the way he discovers chilling parallels with his own family story and eventually realizes that the head he will bury is only symbolic. And yet its power as a metaphor remains. Using new ground breaking scholarship and working with a team of leading historians from across the country, The Head of Joaquin Murrieta provides a dissenting view of American history from a decidedly Chicano perspective. Deeply personal, irreverent and entertaining, the film tears open a painful and long ignored historical trauma that has never been explored on American television: the lynching of Mexican Americans in the West. 30 minutes | English | Color | CC Written, Produced and Directed by John J. Valadez Produced and Edited by Carleen L. Hsu

Filmmakers Peter Miller and John Valadez bring a bold new perspective to an important, though rarely visited, aspect of the civil rights movement: the Black Panther Party. Told from the point of view of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, an eloquent party leader who served 19 years in prison before his conviction was overturned, this film offers insight into the political debates surrounding contemporary race relations 60 minutes | English | Color | CC Directed by John J. Valadez Produced by Peter Miller

The Longoria Affair tells the story of one key injustice – the refusal, by a small-town funeral home in Texas after World War II, to care for a dead Mexican American soldier’s body “because the whites wouldn’t like it” – and shows how the incident sparked outrage nationwide. Two stubborn and savvy leaders, newly-elected Senator Lyndon Johnson and veteran/activist Dr. Hector Garcia, formed an alliance over the incident. Over the next 15 years, their complex, sometimes contentious relationship would help Latinos become a national political force for the first time in American history, carry John Kennedy to the White House, and ultimately lead to Johnson’s signature on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 60 minutes | English | Color | CC Written, Produced and Directed by John J. Valadez

When the renowned sculptor John was commissioned to create a monument to Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate for the city of El Paso, it was meant to be a little larger than life-size. But Houser had other plans: to create the largest bronze equestrian statue ever created. To some, the massive statue is a fitting tribute to the contributions Hispanic people made to building the American West. But Native Americans are outraged — the Oñate they remember was the man who cut off the native people’s feet, brought genocide to their land, and sold their children into slavery. As El Paso divides along lines of race and class in The Last Conquistador, the artist must face the moral implications of his work. 60 minutes | English | Color | CC Produced and Directed by John J. Valadez and Cristina Ibarra