That’s how I can best describe my overall feeling being here at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

I’m inspired by the response Molly and I have received by our film-in-progress. Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and the Sundance Documentary Fund, stressed that the time is now for a film about Cesar and no one has told the story in the way we are telling it.

Our fellow filmmakers here are also hungry to see this film and see us harness the energy that’s been building up in the nearly two decades since Cesar’s passing.

With this I can’t wait to start working on the contemporary story within our documentary — the part of the documentary that demonstrates the impact Cesar has on the current generation of organizers fighting for a new generation of farm workers.

Tomorrow we meet with potential funders. Wish us luck.

And remember, Si Se Puede!

Here are a few more shots in Park City. It’s cold here!

Our cause is much smaller than building a union, but in a way it mirrors the legacy Cesar left us. We’re trying to build a community around a project that will honor Cesar’s work and the modern-day organizers who carry out that work today.

And, like Cesar did when he walked door-to-door trying to generate support for the union, we face obstacles. It’s difficult to raise the money to make this film. It’s hard to make any film, but documentaries are especially tough. I heard someone say not too long ago that “any documentary that gets finished is a good documentary” – illustrating just how arduous the process can be.

We know the road ahead is tough, but we believe that Cesar’s story is too important to be lost to history.

Just as Cesar inspired and rallied a community with limited resources, we too are calling on you – our community – to join with us to build and make something powerful.

To make a great film, you assemble a great team. We consider you part of that team.

Whether you knew Cesar, worked with him, walked on a picket line, boycotted grapes, marched in the fields, read books about him, wrote  a school paper, were inspired by his example, or are just learning about his legacy now, you’re part of Cesar’s legacy.

Together we’ll create an important and historic documentary – a film we can share with the nation – and the world – about a man who used his personal experience with discrimination and injustice as the motivation to create a peaceful, non-violent movement that transformed how we would like farmworkers to live and work, and that transformed how a myriad of community organizers throughout this country fight for justice.

That’s why we’re conducting grassroots fundraising events to support the film’s production. And it’s why we ask you to connect with us on facebook or to join our mailing list. Because it’s your film, too. Join us to make this happen.

~Rick

PS: Do you have a story to share about how Cesar’s legacy touched or influenced you? Leave a comment on the blog, we’ll share them all right here on this site.

Check out Director Rick Perez on the Friday Oct 30th episode of KPFK’s Pocho Hour of Power.

At lunchtime my classmates and I all sat side-by-side to eat a free lunch the federal government provided to Head Start students and other in the to low-income children in my neighborhood. That day there was an extra lunch so the teacher gave it to a Chicano university student who volunteered in our classroom. The volunteer took the lunch sat next to me and the other children and started eating his meal.

The meal included a serving of fruit cocktail. If you have the good fortune of not knowing what fruit cocktail is, it’s a canned food product of diced fruit that swims in heavy syrup. My best guess is that the product is made chunks of peaches and pears, grapes and other semi-identifiable pieces of fruit. It isn’t very appetizing, but weren’t picky — we were poor and we were hungry.

So there we were, my classmates and I eating our fruit cocktail when I look over at the university student and I noticed him quietly and meticulously removing every grape from his serving of fruit cocktail before he ate it. Puzzled, I asked why.

“Because the people who grow the grapes treat the people who pick the grapes very bad,” he explained calmly. “They pay the people who pick the grapes very little money. So people who pick the grapes are poor and they can only afford to live in shacks. And the people who own the grapes yell at them and do whatever they can so they won’t have to pay them any more money. And the people who pick the grapes are mostly Mexicans and Chicanos – people like us,” he said motioning around the table.”  With that we all looked each other. Then we looked at our serving of fruit cocktail.

I’m not sure who went first; me or one of my classmates. But one us of reached slowly in their fruit cocktail, carefully picked out a grape and removed it from their meal. Than someone else followed. And someone else. Pretty soon we all removed every last grape from our lunch. Unbeknownst to us, a handful of four-year-olds, at that moment we had joined La Causa.

Why am I doing this? Producing a feature documentary about Cesar E. Chavez? Since I’ve been at it for nearly three years I think it would be a good idea to ignore the distractions and chores for an hour or two to try to answer that question.

Best place to start is to list the reasons why I’m not doing it, clear those out of the way:

1. I’m not doing it because I’m particularly liberal or noble or self-sacrificing. I’m as selfish and narcissistic as the best of them.
2. I’m not doing it because I think that one documentary film can reverse hundreds of years of feudalism in American Agriculture, though I do believe it can help.
3. I’m not doing it because I’m an expert on Cesar Chavez, his history or his philosophy. I’m no expert. I still have much to learn about the man.
4. I’m not doing it to make money, that would be stupid, and I’m not stupid.
5. I’m not doing it because people mix Cesar Chavez up with Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, though it would be nice if everyone I meet after the film is released stops mixing these two very different men up.
6. I am not doing because I am Mexican-American. I am only Mexican-American when I eat.
7. I have never worked so hard or so long on a film. But I cannot say that I was born to produce this movie, or had some sort of “calling” to tell Cesar’s story, though I do think Rick Perez does.

In 2007, Rick approached me with the idea to produce “Cesar’s Last Fast” with him. At first I thought he was talking about the president of Venezuela. He soon fixed that. He showed me Lorena Parlee’s footage. I cried, said yes, and we started making a documentary film called “Cesar’s Last Fast.”

The beginning was as easy as that.

Rick and I collaborated on several television documentaries before 2007. At one point I turned to him and said “together we make an amazing filmmaker.” I still think that is true. As filmmakers, collaborators, and friends Rick and I are a good team. Belief in each other is a powerful thing. Cesar knew this.

He sent farm workers to cities and towns across the country with $5 a week and the directive; “Go stop the supermarkets from selling grapes.” With no experience, no money, and no institutional support, the farm workers did it. Millions of Americans boycotted grapes, shut down the growers, and in 1975 the California Agriculture Labor Relations Act was signed in to law. Cesar believed that farm workers that had never left the Central Valley or held any job outside the fields, could do it. He believed, and he was right.

So, “Why am I doing this?” I am doing this because I believe in it.

I strongly passionately and wholeheartedly believe in this film. I have never seen a production blessed with so much good fortune, good people, and good will. We’ve had our ups and downs as everyone does when they are engaged in a creative process, but I have never felt so energized and inspired by my work as I do now.

Films like “Cesar’s Last Fast” do not come around very often. I’m grateful to know and work with Rick Perez and deeply honored to be part of “Cesar’s Last Fast.” With your help we are going to make a beautiful film.

Si Se Puede. — Molly