By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
The 14th NTCC Honors film trailer on the upcoming film, Chicano Thermidor: Art and Identity in San Antonio, 1970 -1995, is now available for public viewing: Click Here For Trailer. The trailer, produced by Honors Scholar, Johnathan Ventura, and both scored and narrated by regional composer, Kenny Goodson, provides a five-minute introduction to the film set to premiere this 20 February at the James and Elizabeth Whatley Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. at NTCC. The trailer prefigures the larger story about rival Tejano art associations in San Antonio during the late-twentieth century, and the struggle to define Mexican-American identity.
The film, directed by Gladys Winkle Scholar, Emma Francis Mendoza, is based on research by Texas Heritage National Bank Scholar, Stephanie Hernandez, and work performed this last summer in San Antonio. The trailer begins by showcasing a Chicano art association, Con Safo. The artists in this group, led by Mel Casas (played by José Fuentes) trace the poverty on San Antonio’s West Side to discrimination, and believe in an art that can revive Aztec imagery, and galvanize a more strident group consciousness. They are soon opposed by a rival organization, the Community Cultural Arts Organization CCAO), that wins big civic grants for mural projects that help to defuse neighborhood gangs, and engage the area’s youth. The CCAO are more focused on pride than protest. The trailer sets up the terms of this conflict between the two associations. The film, in February, will disclose the larger story of what association endured, and, in the end, dominated the visual culture of the community.
The trailer constitutes the seventh film score for this medium composed by Kenny Goodson of Hughes Springs.
It is also the second time in the film series that Goodson has been called upon to orchestrate Mexican-American themes. This he does with a lush melody reminiscent of the music of Joaquin Rodrigo that arises from a motif of falling thirds, the use of mariachi trumpets, lively counter-thematic material in the strings, a castanet interlude, and a playful flute descant at the end.
Johnathan Ventura, a first-year honors student who now lives in Pittsburg, served as cinematographer last summer, and associate producer of the trailer and film this last fall. Along with other involved honors students, including Hailey Randall who served as the film’s unit production director, Ventura presented an earlier version of the trailer at the fall meeting of the Walter Prescott Webb Society in Georgetown, Texas last October. The Webb Society is the college auxiliary of the Texas State Historical Association, and NTCC has had an active chapter in this organization since 2011.
The trailer also features snippets of the main actors. José Fuentes plays a relaxed and confident, Mel Casas, the leader of Con Safo, the Chicano organization. He is joined by a fiery performer, Alison Majors, as Rosie Castro, a debonair Ian Mares as Felipe Reyes, the vivacious Jasmine Landaverde as Carmen Garza--a model, and Andrew Perez, playing the preeminent San Antonio painter Jesse Treviño. The rival CCAO group also appears including theatre major and singer Madeline Simmons as Cynthia Garcia, Tristan Dierflinger as Anastacio Torres, and Araceli Landaverde as the immovable San Antonio councilwoman, Maria Berriozábal. Two better-known historical figures also round out the trailer, Celebrity San Antonio Mayor, Henry Cisneros, played by Remington Covey, and the “Queen of Tejano Music,” Selena Quintanilla, played by the scholar whose ideas led to the film itself, Stephanie Hernandez.
The film effort was made possible by generous donations by Jerald and Mary Lou Mowery of Mount Vernon, and the David L. Stevenson Family of Longview. The filming occurred last summer in Titus, Franklin, Cass and Marion counties.
