To date, film scholarship has not considered the issue of Chicano and Latino representation and participation in the American film industry. Genre criticism in particular has been all but blind to the presence of Chicanos in genres that have, at times, been constructed around a Chicano or Chicana "other" - Westerns, social problem films, and the more recent urban violence film. Additionally, Chicano studies draw upon the scholarship of Chicano politics, narrative and visual art, and cultural studies. This scholarship has often been divided between historical/political accounts of public events and cultural/literary interpretations of art. In "Chicanos and Film" these seemingly disparate elements come together in an illustration of how film can be used as primary evidence about social history, and how artifacts of expressive culture draw their determinate shape from social and political realities. The contributors variously examine Chicano representation in both Hollywood and Mexican cinema, resistance within studio production and the press, and counter-cinema.
Noriega has gathered the work of scholars who have been instrumental in the development of a critical discourse on the subject, placing their scholarship within a conceptual framework, thereby offering new and useful ways of thinking about cinema as a social actor. Chon A. Noriega is assistant professor in the department of American studies at the University of New Mexico, and the author of several articles on Chicano cinema. He is curator of film programs, including the Whitney Museum, and a media production consultant on issues of curriculum development and distribution. Noriega is guest editor of "Jumpcut" and "Spectator".

Contributions by: Chon A. Noriega