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The UCLA Film & Television Archive, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and UCLA Library Digital Collections are pleased to announce an online access initiative to offer free research viewing of the 1970s Chicana/o/x television program Reflecciones. Over 50 endangered videotapes of the Reflecciones series have been preserved by the Archive and are now streaming on the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform: digital.library.ucla.edu/reflecciones
Produced for Los Angeles television station KABC, the vital local public affairs program Reflecciones (1972–74) offered Chicana/o/x perspectives as an alternative to network news sources, whose coverage often ignored or stereotyped people of color. In his essential book, Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (University of Minnesota Press), UCLA Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega explicates the varied landscape of media production by Chicana/o/x communities in the 1970s, describing the Reflecciones series “as unique in style as in its radical subjectivity … mix[ing] an eclectic coverage of current issues with cultural investigations, incorporating dramatizations and low-budget special effects into its documentaries.” Noriega credits a creative team of talented Chicana/o/x filmmakers and producers, including Tony Rodriguez, Luis C. Garza, Susan Racho and David Garcia Jr., among others, for the program’s numerous innovations and deeply committed community-based focus.
Actor and activist Ricardo Montalbán
As was common broadcast industry practice at the time, Reflecciones was not slated to be retained by KABC at the end of the series run, with the original 2 in. videotapes earmarked for reuse in subsequent series to allow the station to recoup raw tape stock costs. Thankfully, before that recycling occurred, producer Tony Rodriguez ensured the survival of Reflecciones by having the masters dubbed to 3/4 in. U-matic tapes and donating those holdings to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC). Episodes of the local Emmy Award-winning series held in the CSRC’s collection (conserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive) cover a diverse range of topics, including the United Farm Workers, efforts to incorporate East Los Angeles, Chicano prisoners of war in Vietnam, and many others. A special three-part series of episodes explored relations between Black and Brown gangs in Los Angeles. Notable guests interviewed on Reflecciones include actor and activist Ricardo Montalbán, filmmaker and activist Jesús Salvador Treviño, anti-war activist Delia Alvarez, and many others. Additionally, out of concern for, and in solidarity with, other marginalized communities not represented in the public affairs broadcast space, the Chicana/o/x producers of Reflecciones offered an inclusive view of Los Angeles and beyond, collaborating with community representatives and peers on episodes focusing on a view of Wounded Knee from Native American perspectives, a profile of Nisei Week celebrations in the community of Little Tokyo, and an examination of issues faced by people with intellectual disabilities.
Anti-war activist Delia Alvarez
Thanks to the collective efforts of the staff of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Professor Chon Noriega and the support of the John H. Mitchell Television Endowment, over 50 endangered videotapes of the Reflecciones series have been preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. They are presented online for research and study. Viewed today, these episodes of Reflecciones provide a critical moving image record of how Chicana/o/x communities represented themselves on the medium of television during a pivotal time of social change in Los Angeles.
Watch online through the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform: digital.library.ucla.edu/reflecciones
—John H. Mitchell Television Curator Mark Quigley
Additional Resources:
Archive Blog: Video profile of UCLA Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega discussing Reflecciones
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center: Finding Aid for the Luis Garza Papers
UCLA Film & Television Archive: Chicana/o/x Film and Television Collection
UCLA Library Research Guide: Latinx and Chicanx Film and Television
UCLA Library Special Collections National Hispanic Media Coalition Subject Files
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