"We're the Main Event, Baby!': Mexican and Mexican American Reclamation of a Cinematic Center," Moving Image
Brief summary: This article argues that reclamation of Mexican American subjects in early twentieth-century archival film requires locating, preserving, making accessible, and—as modeled in the essay itself—rereading. Beginning with a longing for what is not there, for what is absent, indeed makes something else possible. Renavigating the erasure of historical representation not only allows us to mark what is missing in visual culture documentation but creates possibilities to locate alternate, accidental forms of documentation.