50th Anniversary Screening: Please, Don't Bury Me Alive!

Free admission. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Q&A with filmmaker Efraín Gutiérrez and Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

Presented in partnership with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Funding for this screening is provided by the Hugh M. Hefner Classic American Film Program.

Considered the first Chicano feature, Efraín Gutiérrez’s landmark independent film Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive! (¡Por favor, no me entierren vivo!) was believed lost for years until UCLA Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega tracked down the director and relocated elements to the UCLA Film & Television Archive, where collaborative restoration efforts brought the film back to life.

Incorporating Chicano forms of popular theater and music, the bilingual film offers a rhythmic, in-depth look at 1970s-era South Texas Chicano culture, as its central character questions his place in a society that undervalues Latinos, so many of whom had been killed in the Vietnam War. A historic, influential hit in regional theaters, the film’s tremendous impact on Chicano cinema was further cemented in 2014, when it was named to the National Film Registry for its historic, cultural, and artistic significance. Today, in a moment when visibility itself can feel precarious, the film’s call to live boldly in defiance of erasure resonates as powerfully as it did 50 years ago.

Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive!

Year: 1976
Country: U.S.
Language: English and Spanish with English subtitles
Runtime: 81 min.
Digital. Color.