Review: A California arts activist's story comes to life in 'American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez'

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Set us as preferred There are many dedicated figures devoted to Chicano empowerment in America.But in the arts, playwright-director-impresario Luis Valdez — the migrant farmworkers’ son behind the defiantly consciousness-raising El Teatro Campesino and the historic hits “Zoot Suit” and “La Bamba” — holds a singular place, achieved with remarkable perseverance.

It’s a trajectory that the immensely appealing, rollicking documentary “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” tracks with a vitality and purpose befitting its subject.Anchored by Valdez himself, now in his 80s and filling the camera frame like a grandfatherly lion, the film supplements his vivid biographical details with rich archival footage and testimonials from family members, collaborators and peers.There’s also the bold but sneakily effective narrator choice in Edward James Olmos, reviving his snarling, star-making El Pachuco growl from “Zoot Suit” to remind us of one of Valdez’s essential contributions to the theatrical canon.

(Olmos is also an interviewee, as is Cheech Marin, Taylor Hackford, Lou Diamond Philips and labor leader Dolores Huerta.)Born in Delano, Calif., and drawn to literature and language as a way to combat racist assumptions about a Mexican American’s destiny, Valdez found his gifts sharpened by puppet shows, school plays and finally, the union movement in his hometown.Valdez saw that pointed, raw satire was not only necessary but a recruitment tool for the fight.

We hear the underdog aesthetic term rasquachismo used to describe these early impromptu performances: essentially a colorful funkiness, “so funky that nothing can undermine you,” Valdez says.As if something earthier and stronger had been harvested in the fields with all those valuable grapes.Ahead of its world premiere at Sundance, De Los spoke...