For Release: March 25, 2014
Note: This is an invitation-only event for farm workers.
Tuesday, March 25 at 6:30 p.m.
Cesar Chavez film screens for 1,000-plus farm workers at historic site where it all began during novel outdoor screening
Hollywood has never seen a premier like this: More than 1,000 farm workers and others who are living the legacy of Cesar Chavez joining actress America Ferrera and director Diego Luna Tuesday night for a unique outdoor screening of Luna’s film at a site depicted in the movie that is now a National Historic Landmark. See: http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/american_latino_heritage/The_Forty_Acres.html
Diego Luna, the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the United Farm Workers of America are sponsoring the pre-release premier for farm workers of Cesar Chavez the film outdoors at the “Forty Acres” outside Delano where the UFW ran strikes and boycotts and where Chavez fasted in the 1960s— all events chronicled in the movie.
Most of the audience will be farm workers who labor under union contracts or who are organizing or negotiating for UFW agreements. They are being bused in from between Madera and Arvin in the Central Valley and from as far away as the southern Salinas Valley and Ventura County. Also included will be residents of high- quality affordable housing communities built and managed by the Chavez foundation in Delano and nearby Shafter as well as valley students receiving academic tutoring through the foundation. Most in the audience are among the 500,000 daily listeners of Radio Campesina, the Chavez foundation’s nine-station Spanish-language educational radio network.
A large screen will be erected in front of the building hosting Chavez’s former offices and the union hall where grape growers signed their first UFW contracts in 1970, one of the last scenes in the film that releases across the nation on March 28, 2014.
Who: 1,000-plus farm workers from the Central and Salinas valleys and Ventura County, actress America Ferrera (playing Helen Chavez), director Diego Luna, Paul Chavez, Chavez’s middle son and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation that licensed the rights to the movie, UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez.
What: The outdoor premier for farm workers in Delano of Cesar Chavez the film at a historic site portrayed in the movie.
When: 6:30 p.m. dinner for audience, 8 p.m. brief program and screening.
Where: Outdoors at the Forty Acres west of Delano, 30168 Garces Hwy. (corner of Mettler Ave.), Delano, CA 93215.
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