Educational Media Reviews Online

A corrido is a traditional Mexican literary and musical form, similar to a ballad. Merle Simmons, in The Mexican Corrido as a Source for Interpretive Study of Modern Mexico, 1870 - 1950 (Indiana University Press, 1957), provides a working definition: "It may be a simple narrative ballad which relates an event of interest to only a small region; it may be a song with a love theme and lyric overtones...; it may be mere comment on the political or economic situation; or it may become a narrative with strong epic flavor if the singer chooses to report an incident which concerns some heroic figure, be he bandit, general, or president."

In the modern era, corridos can take a cinematic form. An excellent example is El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez (Moctesuma Esparza Productions, 1994), a cinematic ballad of a borderland hero. Similarly, the story of Cecilia Rios concerns a heroic figure, but in this case the heroic figure is not a bandit, general, or president. Cecilia Rios was a beautiful, popular, intelligent fifteen-year-old Latina, brutally murdered (in a random act of violence) near her home in Richmond, California, a working class, industrial area near San Francisco. This documentary video is a ballad about her short but inspiring life and her brutal death. Even more, it is about how her classmates, friends, family and community are attempting to deal with violence and its aftermath. It has the structure and feel of a poem, rather than a documentary.

The video is centered around a Spanish-language corrido that was composed by Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds), an all-student folkloric musical group based in the Richmond/San Pablo area. (This talented group of singers/musicians was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award in the "Best Children's Recording" category.) The corrido beautifully retells the story of Cecilia's life, death, and the neighborhood's response. Brief segments of the corrido are performed throughout the video; the corrido is then performed in its entirety at the video's conclusion.

Latina filmmaker Kristy Guevara-Flanagan has magnificently crafted this montage, blending several disparate genres (including archival news footage, snippets of interviews with friends and acquaintances, super-8mm footage of the neighborhood and crime scene, and film footage of Los Cenzontles performing the corrido) into a coherently woven and substance-packed fifteen-minute short film about a difficult subject.

Much of the video purposely has a grainy or out-of-focus quality, partly due to the use of Super-8mm film. The result is a dramatically visual portrayal of the gritty working-class, industrial area of Richmond. The other technical aspects of the film (sound, editing) are also excellent. One minor technical flaw should be noted -- during the performances by Los Cenzontles, the musicians are in a line from one end of the screen to the other, but unfortunately the two musicians on both ends are off-screen. This work is also available in 16mm format -- it's possible that the wider 16mm format may not have this problem.

Unfortunately, monolingual-English speakers may be somewhat frustrated because of the lack of English subtitles during the performance by Los Cenzontles of the brief corrido segments that are interspersed throughout the video. Fortunately for English-monolinguals, English subtitles are provided when Los Cenzontles perform the entire corrido at the video's conclusion.

The film has been screened at a number of film festivals, both nationally and internationally, and has also been broadcast on the Sundance Film Channel. It has won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Sundance International Film Festival, Independent Film Channel Student Awards, and the New York International Children's Film Festival. Latina filmmaker Guevara-Flanagan is an obvious talent from whom we can expect to see and hear more in the future. She is currently working on Girl She Is, a feature-length documentary about contemporary American pre-teens.

This video covers a hot topic in a manner that is sensitive and poetic. Kristy Guevara-Flanagan obviously has her pulse on Latino/a youth. This work is refreshingly different from the other talking head videos on this topic. It is recommended for public libraries wanting to add video material on youth violence, and for academic libraries and media centers that support coursework in film studies, ethnic studies, psychology and sociology.