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Spotlight Sundays: Chicana (1979) Film Screening with Talk Back Including Film Director, Sylvia Morales and OMCA Mellon Fellow, Gilda Posada

March 17 from 1:00 pm 2:15 pm

$1 – $30 Sliding scale

This program will highlight female identified leaders of the Chicano/a Art Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s through a contemporary lens.

It will begin with a film screening of “Chicana” (1979, Sylvia Morales). This 22-minute film illuminates the struggles and triumphs of Chicana womxn during this era and is considered to be the first major feminist Chicana documentary. In addition to the acclaimed short, Morales wrote and directed over thirty nationally recognized documentaries ranging from the farm worker’s struggle to the music of Los Lobos.

The film will be followed by a talk back with the director and OMCA’s Mellon Fellow, Gilda Posada.  Posada is a Xicana cultural worker whose projects are invested in practices that challenge patriarchal and heteronormative structures.

This program is a part of our exhibition programming for Por el Pueblo: The Legacy and Influence of Malaquías Montoya on view at OMCA through June 30, 2024. 

Accessibility

Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is committed to providing programs that are accessible, welcoming, and inclusive of our community. Wheelchairs, sensory inclusive devices, and additional amenities are available for checkout on a first come, first served basis at the Ticketing Desk. To request other accommodations, like American Sign Language (ASL), Cantonese, Spanish or another language interpreter, please email [email protected] at least three weeks before the event. Learn more about our accessibility options.

Panelists

Sylvia Morales directed, wrote, produced and edited over 30 nationally recognized documentaries ranging from the farm worker’s struggle to the music of Los Lobos and the acclaimed short documentary CHICANA which was selected to the Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2022.

She’s directed dramatic episodic programs for SHOWTIME and UNIVISION

Ms. Morales is a recipient of the Rockefeller Fellowship Award in Media Awards, was selected to participate in the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, received a Fellow from the National Endowment of the Arts and been recognized for Outstanding Contribution of Southern California Women to the Arts. 

She’s a graduate from the School of Film and Television at UCLA and is a Professor Emeritus from the School of Film/Television at Loyola Marymount University. 

 

Gilda Posada (1988) is a Xicana artist, curator, and art historian from Southeast Los Angeles.  Her work explores Chicanx-Indigenous feminist and queer decolonial practices through art and  visual culture. Her projects are invested in challenging and unlearning settler-colonial ideology,  while simultaneously re-centering Indigenous thought and practice.  

Gilda received her AB from UC Davis in Chicana/o Studies and Comparative Literature. She  graduated with a dual degree from California College of the Arts in the MFA Social Practice  program and the M.A. Visual and Critical Studies program. Prior to her graduate work, she  served as the Curator for Galería de la Raza in San Francisco, CA. Gilda also served as Assistant  Director for Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer in Woodland, CA, where she assisted in  coordinating Chicana/o /x programming and in leading free silk-screen workshops for youth and  community members. Gilda is a Ph.D. candidate in History of Art at Cornell University, where  she is completing her dissertation “Reigniting the Sacred Fire: An Analysis of Chicana Indigenous and Queer Chicanx Art,” that articulates how Chicana/o/x artists have used  materiality, print mediums, and visual culture as a method to re-connect to their Indigenous  knowledges, ceremonies, creation stories, and medicines. Currently, Gilda is the Andrew W.  Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Oakland Museum of California where she is curating an  exhibition set to open June 2024.