Welcome, My name is Christiana Malacara, I'm your host for Somos Hispanos.

In this segment, we will be exploring Chicano history through the eyes of film producer and writer Brandon Loran Maxwell.

Brandon Maxwell is a writer, film producer, entrepreneur, but also a modern day cultural historian.

Brandon created the documentary film called American Homeboy.

This film not only preserves culture, but creates an awareness and a movement around the Chicano history and the cultural makeup of those involved.

This film has been shown across the country, and we are fortunate enough to have it showing in the Great Lakes Bay region.

Well, my name is Brandon, and I am a writer and I guess I'm also a director now because I just made my first film.

The name of the film is American Homeboy, and it is a film about Chicano culture, urban Chicano culture, and the many facets underneath Chicano culture.

We cover about 100 years where the history, from Mexican-American history spanning from the Mexican Revolution through World War II, through Vietnam War and through modern times.

And we basically trace the evolution of the history of low riding, urban zoot suit culture.

Cholo culrure.

And I think the goal of the project is to be able to contextualize these cultures for the average viewer.

Well, as a writer, I'm always looking at ways to be able to simplify and contextualize things for the audience.

And I felt like this topic was so in depth that it demanded a longer project than just an essay.

I had written an essay called Cholo are as American as apple pie.

They got a lot of traction, and so I wanted to expand on some of those topics, with a different medium.

And so film is always been a love of mine.

And so I figured I might as well do film.

So we happened to cross, some footage that was, sitting basically in some archives on the west coast.

And so we were able to take that footage and use AI to restore it.

And then that served as kind of the basis for our film.

Chicano history is American history.

I mean, Chicano culture is really a subset of Mexican-American culture, and it's called Mexican-American for a reason, right?

Mexican history.

And it's American history.

It's Mexican culture and it's American culture.

So I wanted to be able to tell this history in a way that average people could watch it and understand it and appreciate it and come away with a, I think, a better appreciation.

If I'm able to distill just one stereotype into me, I think I served my purpose.

I've had a lot of people, after seeing the film come up to me and say, hey, I had no idea that that's where this comes from.

I didn't know that low riding began that way.

I didn't know anything about the zoot suiters and how much that meant to the community.

There's so much history, particularly related to World War II and the impact it had on Chicano and Mexican-American communities that is just left out of the history books.

And so I think that the average person can go into this film and walk out with a better understanding of that history and have better context.

And then I think that hopefully will create better relationships between our different communities.

One of the things that I've heard feedback on is everything that happened to Mexican-American youth during World War II.

The average student isn't taught this history in college and they aren't taught that Mexican-Americans were rounded up for wearing zoot suits, during World War II.

We don't typically even think of zoot suits in American society as being that integral to the Mexican-American experience.

And I think in the Mexican-American community and particularly the Chicano community, it is.

And I think this film shows that, and it demonstrates that.

And so I think students will walk away with a better understanding of the impact that had on the psyche of a mixed Americans and the Mexican-American community in history.

Well, I started, Cholo Media because I wanted to be able to tell stories that I felt like major media outlets and major entertainment companies were either too afraid to touch or simply didn't know about, so they couldn't tell it.

And I wanted to be able to pull from people, from the community, to help tell these stories.

What's next?

So I got another project.

I'm starting to film, next month in LA, and, it's called Defiant History, where we go and tackle different aspects of history that are related to outsider subcultures.

And so I'll probably spend more on that in the future.

But, I also have a book coming out.

it's a collection of essays and, yeah, I'm, always working on different things, so we'll see.

But I think one thing is going to remain consistent and that is telling stories, is from subcultures that I feel like are overly stereotyped or that people don't fully understand.

You know, I like to contextualize subcultures and people who are on the margins of society.

So you can watch this film on-line at Daily Chela TV.com, or you can watch it on Android, Roku and iOS at the Daily Chela TV app.

And then this summer, it will be going to streaming.

I don't know what the streaming services are going to be yet, but we'll be posting that information on social media once we know.