A Song for Cesar doesn’t need to be slick to reveal its beating heart. It’s the kind of labor of love that brings recent history into colorful and tuneful focus. And with conditions for farmworkers these days hardly tolerable still, maybe this movie can be absorbed as a song “from” Cesar too. [Read more]
Abel Sanchez and Jorge Santana have added music to a story of Cesar Chavez and it’s really a song for Cesar. The piece is so moving that I can’t wait for it to be in the clear possession of everybody, Black, and White, Latino, and Asian, Native American, all of us we should have it.
The power of music and how it helped inspire social change for California farm workers is the focus of a new documentary from musician turned filmmaker Abel Sanchez called “A Song for Cesar.” [Read more]
Fills in a unique angle in the tapestry of Chicano history…Both sprawling and focused, this documentary tracks the many musicians and artists who supported Cesar Chavez’s fight for social justice. [Read more]
A Song for Cesar is a rich documentary on the role of music and the arts in the critical years of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Worker movement – so rich that it’s much more than that. There’s a time capsule of the turbulent 1960s, the story of emerging Chicano identity and a meditation on the role of arts in political activism – all embedded in a compelling history lesson.
A Song for Cesar captures the zeitgeist of the time.
A Song for Cesar, attempts to recast Chavez as a transcendent historical figure and an ordinary individual. Co-directors Andres Alegria and Abel Sanchez successfully achieve this balance by making viewers aware of the role of art in shaping Chavez’s personal life, and the role artists played in the United Farm Workers and The Campesino Movement’s demands for dignity and fair wages.
Stories like these humanize Chavez and make the film less an exercise in stilted history and more of an entertaining historical narrative with a musical heartbeat.
A Vibrant Musical Retrospective of the Farm Workers Movement.
A Song For Cesar teaches and inspires with a head-bobbing, toe-tapping beat. It is a remarkable remembrance of a man and movement.
Takes a musical approach to [Cesar Chavez’s] life…Includes revealing interviews with several heavyweights – fellow activist Dolores Huerta, Carlos Santana, Joan Baez, Maya Angelou – and culminates with a studio performance of the title song.
Pumps up the music behind Chicano power…Film uses plentiful archival footage and interviews with leading fellow activists… Emphasizing [cultural renaissance] is what distinguishes Song for Cesar from numerous prior docs on this general history, as it throws a spotlight on related developments in visual arts, theater, and particularly music.
A well-rounded look into the life of activist/labor leader Cesar Chavez, relating how this groundbreaking drives for farmworkers’ rights inspired music, art and theater pieces. The stirring documentary is stuffed with vintage archival photos and features memorable commentary from dozens, including Carlos Santana, Joan Baez, Dolores Huerta and countless others.