Please, Don't Bury Me Alive!

This 1976 independent film, a slice-of-barrio-life about the dilemmas facing a young Chicano in the spring of 1972 amid the Chicano Movement, was shot and exhibited in South Texas. It outperformed All the President's Men in some small towns and singlehandedly broke Mexico's monopoly over the 400 Spanish-language theaters in the U.S. The film inspired an independent film movement in Mexico, where the state controlled the industry, and among Chicano filmmakers in the U.S., who further refined Efraín Gutiérrez's successful grassroots marketing strategy. The film is important as an instance of regional filmmaking, as a bicultural and bilingual narrative and as a precedent that expanded the way that films got made in two nations.