In his debut feature documentary, Director Eddie Sánchez paints a vulnerable portrait of his family and their experience as immigrants in the U.S. Mexicanamerican introduces us to his parents, Lalo and Beby Sánchez who, like many immigrants and refugees, came to the U.S. in hope of opportunity and a better future. Sánchez joins The Rolling Tape to discuss his experience creating this independent documentary, his relationship to his family, and how the film acts as a love letter to his parents and a reclamation of his Mexican heritage. 

The film employs a mix of Lalo’s VHS home movies that he would send to family back in Mexico to act as life updates, and contemporary interviews shot by Eddie with Lalo and Beby about their lives. Mexicanamerican is Eddie’s aim to analog and digital bridge to connect with his parents in a new way – cultivating his very own home movie. 

Those videos were their way of being connected with family members who couldn’t come to the States to visit them. It was their way of sharing their new life with them. I think that created this new need, more so than perhaps other families at the time, to keep track of things and to record things because he wanted to share them. That was his audience. What I think was really interesting to me was now I have these tapes, and now I’m editing them into a new home video that I am now using to cross a border with my family. There is something that is very powerful about the footage and why I wanted to use it beyond what’s universal about watching old home videos and the nostalgia that, even just the aesthetic of VHS tapes, makes people nostalgic. I love how that universalizes it, but that is what made me realize, I have a movie.

The film had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 9, with additional screenings on June 10, and June 14.

Follow our interviewees online:
Eddie Sánchez, IMDB, Instagram 

Follow our interview host online:
Mariana Fabian

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Credits:

  • Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
  • Artwork: Danny Jarabek
  • Editor: Danny Jarabek
  • Assistant Producer: Evan Miller
  • Feature Image Credit to Evelia Filmworks