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.
A celebration of the organizers, musicians and artists comprising Cesar Chavez’s Farmworkers movement…Tells a previously untold story about the musicians and artists who dedicated their time, creativity and reputations to peacefully advance Chavez’s movement of labor organizing in pursuit of better wages and working conditions for farmworkers. Also explores other facets of Chavez’s life — from childhood to his final days — revelations that, until now, have not been shared on screen.
A unique and stimulating view of the life and legacy of American labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez and the farmworker movement.
History will remember the blood, sweat, and tears shed by late civil-rights activist and labor leader Cesar Chavez while standing up for American farmworkers. In Song for Cesar, co-writers and co-directors Andres Alegria and Abel Sanchez build on that legacy and pride through the music of Chavez’s era. Daniel Valdez’s “Brown Eyed Children of the Sun,” Joel Rafael’s “El Bracero,” Little Joe y La Familia’s “Viva la Huelga,” and other songs became the powerful soundtrack for Latino farmworkers who otherwise felt invisible and unheard. Through stunning archival photographs and footage and interviews with icons that include Carlos Santana, Joan Baez, Cheech Marin, Edward James Olmos, Maya Angelou, and Chavez’s United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, this affectionate documentary hits many inspiring notes, expressing the emotion that flourished artistically during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s. As filmmaker and playwright Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit) says in the film, “Beware of a movement that sings.”
My father’s work inspired many artists, who in turn moved millions of others with their music. They demonstrated that music can – and must- do more than just entertain; it is also a powerful, non-violent tool that can educate and inspire people to action. Many of these artists participated in this documentary. It is their tribute to my father, which makes ‘A Song for Cesar’ so unique.
Divinity School and Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
“Song for Cesar” does more than most films can do. It entertains, inspires, challenges but also opens the viewer so Cesar Chavez’s life, courage and wisdom can be absorbed into oneself. This cinema magic comes from the musical storytelling that Sanchez and Alegria present with gusto, sensitivity, love and power. This is Chicano history expanded to show the inclusiveness of blacks, Filipinos, whites, indigenous and Mexican folks, musical styles, labor sharing and an insatiable hunger for dignity and justice. The place of origin is Delano, the prophet is Cesar Chavez, the drama is Teatro Campesino, the action is for everyone with a heartbeat to organize and sing and paint and care for others, for the children, for the elders-there is so much human caring in the face of human cruelty, in this film. What carries the story forward from the past to the present to our desperate and shared future is best said in this marvelous film by Luis Valdez, “Beware of a movement that sings”. Watch this film, teach it and you may experience Cesar Chavez come right into the room singing, “Set me Free”.