Today the Librarian of Congress named the 25 films that will comprise the National Film Registry’s entries for the year 2010. These are films that have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance that warrants their preservation for posterity. All in all, there are 550 films in the registry.
Although there is great variety in this year’s list – which includes movies ranging from “Airplane!” and “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Grey Gardens” (which spurred an HBO movie and a Broadway show) – one film will be of special interest to those in the Latino community.
The 20-minute film “I Am Joaquin,” produced and directed in 1969 by filmmaker Luis Valdez (who later directed “Zoot Suit” and “La Bamba”), is a visual presentation of a watershed poem by the Hispanic activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales.
Gonzales, who died in his hometown of Denver in April 2005 at the age of 76, was an amateur and later a pro boxer, retiring in 1955 with a professional record of 65-9-1. He became active in politics later that year and in 1966 founded an organization known as The Crusade for Justice, which was at the leading edge of the Chicano movement.
In 1967, Gonzales – soon to march in Washington leading the Southwestern states’ contingent of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign — penned “I am Joaquin.” Opening as a cry from the present, it takes its listener back through ancient and more recent Mexican history; it speaks to the Mexican, Spanish, Indian, and American roots of U.S. Hispanics.
The Library of Congress offers vast resources of interest to the U.S. Hispanic community and to people worldwide who seek research materials in Spanish. From the Kislak Collection of rare objects reflecting pre- and post-Columbian culture in the New World to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to personal accounts housed in the Library’s Veterans History Project and a “Latinos in math and science: resources for kids, young adults and teachers” web page, there is much to experience, both in-person and online.
The Library has appointed an acting Register of Copyrights (that is, head of the U.S. Copyright Office), Maria Pallante, beginning Jan. 1, 2011. Read more about the appointment here.