Rare Lowrider Documentaries Screen at MACLA for Cinco de Mayo

When San José celebrates Cinco de Mayo this weekend, there will be parades, live cumbia music and lucha libre wrestling spread across two days of revelry. But for those craving a slightly more subdued scene, a darkened screening room at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) might be your dream destination.

On May 4, at 12 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., Ricardo Cortez will be screening the first annual Firme Films Lowrider Showcase, a free two-hour program of historic lowrider documentaries.

“I’ve been into lowrider culture since I was 13 years old,” says Cortez, a creative director, artist and author of The ABCs of Lowriding. When his daughter was born in 2017, he couldn’t find any children’s books that would introduce kids to the culture he loved so much. So he wrote and illustrated one himself.

Cortez is also a collector, an amateur historian of all the ephemera that circulates around these sleek custom cars and the sense of community they create. Magazines and car show fliers led him to lowrider documentaries, many of which were made for television and now exist only in archival collections.

Working with libraries and directors, Cortez has digitized VHS copies of films specifically for this festival.

He’ll be showing a program of documentaries — Cruisin’ Low from 1981, Low ’n Slow: The Art of Lowriding from 1983, and 2005’s Lowriding in Aztlan — along with a trailer for the forthcoming film La Vida Low: San Jose and bonus TV coverage of lowriders.

Word of the screening has even spread to some of the people originally featured in the ’80s documentaries. “Back then they were like 17 years old, and now they’re in their 60s,” Cortez says. “They’re like, ‘Hey this is totally cool that we’re being featured, put on the big screen.’ And so they’re coming down from Sonoma to be able to be a part of this event.”

For Cortez, preserving and presenting these documentaries on a much larger scale (a large-scale projection as opposed to a home television screen) is part of honoring the material and its subject matter. “I think that there’s going to be a sense of pride,” he says, “knowing that we’re really putting our culture on a pedestal during this event.”

The Firme Films Lowrider Showcase screens for free Saturday, May 4, 12–2 p.m. and 2:30–4:30 p.m. at MACLA (510 S. 1st St., San José). Registration is encouraged, but does not guarantee a seat. Seating is first come, first served.