Please, Don't Bury Me Alive!/Por Favor, No Me Entierren Vivo! (1976)
Directed by Efraín Gutiérrez
Written by Sabino Garza
In English and Spanish with subtitles
 

Institutions: Order DVD (digital format not available) and purchase streaming rights at the CSRC Store

 
Individuals: Contact support@chicano.ucla.edu
 
Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series, Volume 6
May 2007
81 minutes
English
Spanish

 

"This independent film, a slice-of-barrio- life that was shot and exhibited in South Texas, outperformed All the President's Men in some small towns, while it singlehandedly broke Mexico's monopoly over the four-hundred Spanish-language theaters in the United States. The film inspired an independent film movement in Mexico, where the state controlled the industry, and among Chicano filmmakers in the United States, who further refined Gutiérrez's successful grassroots marketing strategy. The film is important as an instance of regional filmmaking, as a bicultural and bilingual narrative, and as a precedent that expanded the way that films got made in two nations. It is a compelling film [about the dilemmas facing a young Chicano in the spring of 1972 amid the Chicano Movement, one] made on a dream and a shoestring! In this respect, Gutiérrez is a pivotal figure in the same way as Oscar Micheaux, who directed "race movies" for black audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s; or Maya Deren, whose films, writings, and advocacy efforts provided a paradigm for the development of American avant-garde film from the 1940s to the 1970s; or the multiracial generation of documentary filmmakers who went to the UCLA Ethno-Communications Program in the early 1970s."  - Chon A. Noriega, "The Aztlán Film Institute's Top 100 List," Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998).

Cast includes Efraín Gutiérrez, Josefina Paz, David Moss, Abel Franco, Oscar Escamilla, Jose and Margarita Armando de Hoyos. DVD includes documentary interview with the director.

In 2014, Please, Don't Bury Me Alive! was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

As part of its ongoing effort to identify, preserve, and make accessible the independent productions of Chicano and Latino filmmakers, the CSRC is currently completing restoration on six films and trailers by pioneer Tejano filmmaker Efraín Gutiérrez.

UPC: 
68907604275