00:15I discovered the story of the Hernandez case,
00:18odd enough, on the subway one day
00:19while reading a New York Times editorial.
00:22And it was on the 50th anniversary of the case.
00:24I'd gone to law school.
00:25I'd never heard about this case.
00:27And it surprised me that this case existed.
00:30I decided to delve further into it.
00:32And once I found out about the case
00:33and the fact that it covered not only issues of discrimination,
00:36it was an expansion of the 14th Amendment,
00:39but it also allowed for a way to explore the issues of identity
00:42that surround being a Latino
00:43because it deals with the issues of whiteness.
00:46I thought this was a case that really could be captivating.
00:52I'm always interested in stories from American history,
00:55and in particular stories about people
00:57who have been left out of the traditional tellings
00:59of our history.
01:02And when Carlos approached me about this film
01:05and said, you know, he was making a film
01:07about the Mexican-American civil rights movement
01:09of the post-World War II era,
01:11I thought, I don't know anything about that.
01:14This is a civil rights movement that I should know about.
01:16And so naturally I was intrigued.
01:18And then when I got to learn a little bit more about the story,
01:21I realized that not only was this a very important story
01:24that the public needed to know about,
01:26but it also was a fantastic subject for a film
01:29with really compelling characters
01:31and with a wonderful dramatic storyline.
01:34I think one of the greatest challenges
01:36of telling a story like this,
01:37a story that is in the past,
01:39but not so distant past,
01:41and that comes out of a community
01:43that itself has not been documented
01:45for a variety of reasons,
01:46is trying to piece together that story,
01:50trying to find how the story can be pulled together
01:52in terms of the documentation.
01:55Indeed, when we started working on this project,
01:57there were very little historical literature about this,
02:00and we really were on our own in many ways,
02:02digging through the archives,
02:03talking to witnesses of this history,
02:06and trying to figure out what happened
02:08and putting together this elaborate puzzle.
02:11The Hernandez v. Texas case
02:13is one that has not been generally documented by historians.
02:16This early Mexican-American civil rights movement
02:18is only now coming into its own.
02:20In fact, the Supreme Court case
02:22at the core of our story,
02:24Hernandez v. Texas has no transcript.
02:27They weren't even keeping transcripts back then.
02:29There's no recording.
02:30So we really don't know exactly
02:32what happened inside the Supreme Court.
02:34So putting all of this together
02:35from all the available resources
02:37and from the ingenuity that Carlos brought
02:40to digging through the archives
02:41was really a major, major challenge.
02:44I actually gained access to the homes
02:46of some of the characters,
02:48such as Carlos Cardenas' household
02:50or Gus Garcia's household,
02:51to try to find and go back to their files
02:54and find material,
02:55where we were able to find letters
02:58and correspondence that could verify
03:00some of these points.
03:02The other thing that is difficult
03:04about making a documentary like this
03:07at this particular stage in history,
03:08in the history of the story,
03:09is we're talking 50 years after the fact.
03:12So the principles are no longer around.
03:14We were lucky to find James Zanda
03:16before he unfortunately passed away.
03:18Someone like Gloria Cadena,
03:20who was able to tell us the story of her husband,
03:22and she's since passed away.
03:24Also Paulina Rosa,
03:26who unfortunately passed away as well.
03:29So there was an urgency
03:30about finding our subjects
03:32and capturing them on camera.
03:42When you approach a story,
03:44such as the one that we have,
03:46you want to work on a couple of different levels.
03:48Obviously you want to tell the greater story,
03:52which is the story of Mexican Americans
03:54in this post-war period,
03:55which has generally been excluded from our history.
03:58But that's an amorphous subject
04:00to try to tackle in a one-hour film.
04:03And you really want to bring
04:05the audience along with you,
04:05so it helps tremendously
04:07when you have character.
04:09And luckily we had characters in spades
04:11with people like Gus Garcia,
04:13Carlos Cardena,
04:15John Herrera,
04:16and James Zanda.
04:17So it was a matter of interweaving
04:19the story of the individuals
04:22through the story of the case,
04:24and that way being able to find
04:25and develop the tapestry of that time.
04:28One of the significant challenges
04:30that we had in terms of structuring the story
04:32was that the discrimination
04:34that Mexican Americans face in that period
04:36is not well known throughout this country.
04:39And so we couldn't assume that knowledge,
04:41and we had to sort of establish that base
04:44before we could move into
04:45the actual story of the case itself.
04:49And that proved to be a challenge,
04:50trying to figure out
04:51what the proper entry point would be,
04:52and we went to settle on
04:54telling that backstory first
04:56and then evolving into the case.
05:00Documentary films are about story,
05:02and they're also about image.
05:04They're about pictures,
05:04and we needed to gather images
05:06in order to bring this story to life.
05:08There's a remarkable array of photographs
05:10which came from a variety of sources.
05:13We had a tremendous team
05:14that was going out there
05:15and researching these archives.
05:17Peter Miller,
05:18who was probably the best in the business,
05:19Peter went out and hit every film archive there was,
05:22as well as all the universities,
05:23and going online,
05:24going down to Washington
05:25to research and the like.
05:26It required a whole lot of ingenuity
05:28to figure out what do you show
05:29when there aren't that many pictures
05:31that depict this story.
05:33There are no photographs of Gus Garcia,
05:35Carlos Cadena, and John Herrera
05:37at the Supreme Court.
05:39There's very, very little documentation
05:41of this history,
05:42so we had a challenge,
05:44which was to go out and find images
05:46that could help tell this story.
05:47In the course of a couple of years of work,
05:50we dug up thousands of images.
05:53Jordi Valdez, our associate producer,
05:55was absolutely energetic in going out
05:57and finding and tracking down
05:59all the archives that are out there and possible.
06:01Jordi spent years digging through archives,
06:05finding photos, finding headlines,
06:08finding images and artwork
06:09to help bring this story to life.
06:13We also were very fortunate
06:15in finding the Russell Lee collection of photos,
06:17which exists at the University of Texas.
06:22Russell Lee's photographs from late 1940s
06:25showed Mexican-American life in the Southwest
06:28in the late 1940s,
06:29which really captured the essence
06:31and the spirit of the people
06:32who were at the core of our film
06:34and incorporated a great many
06:35of those photos into our film.
06:51One of the first steps
06:52in making a documentary like this
06:53is trying to find your characters,
06:55the people that you're going to interview,
06:56and that involves a great deal
06:58of guerrilla research
06:59going out contacting people in the field.
07:02Then you go out and you interview them
07:03and you develop these questions
07:06out of other material that you've found.
07:07And you have a great cinematographer
07:09such as Alan Moore
07:10who was able to frame people beautifully,
07:12to cast them in an exquisite light
07:13and make this honor to the people
07:15of this generation.
07:20Alan Moore went with us to Texas
07:23to shoot interviews
07:24and while we were there
07:25tried to capture
07:26some of the cityscapes
07:27and the landscapes
07:28of the place
07:30in which our story took place
07:31to breathe some life
07:33into this half-a-century-old story.
07:36You go through
07:37and you've gathered up this material,
07:39you come back
07:40and you have these interviews,
07:41you still have to pull them together
07:43and from there
07:44pull your story together.
07:46So there's a script
07:47and you have a lot of material
07:49that you've covered
07:49in terms of not only the interviews
07:50but the photographs you've collected
07:52and how is all that
07:53going to be pulled together
07:54and actually be yielded to the story.
07:57Aaron Vega was remarkable
07:59as an editor
07:59in that he really has a gift
08:03and a craft
08:03and an ability
08:04to be able to pull together
08:05these desperate elements
08:06and elegantly lay them out
08:07before us.
08:10The glue or the soul
08:11of a film like this
08:12can be the music
08:13and we found that soul
08:15in Steven Schoenberg.
08:21whose music I think
08:22is evocative
08:23of a presence
08:25while not being intrusive
08:26and just kind of gives
08:27that extra layer of depth
08:29and the voice
08:30of Edward James Olmos
08:32who I think
08:33is the voice
08:35of this woman incarnate
08:38and so his presence
08:39is felt through his voice
08:41and that reality.
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