Tejano music superstar Selena Quintanilla has been gone for 30 years, but the late singer’s family issharing unseen footage of her life in a new documentary, which had its Texas debut at Austin’s Paramount Theater at this year’s South by Southwest festival.
Selena y Los Dinos is the first feature-length documentary film produced about the late singer and her family band. Directed by Mexican-American filmmaker Isabel Castro, the movie offers a tender portrait of the lives, love, and loss of the Quintanilla family.
The film follows the family’s tribulations using a tapestry of decades-old intimate camcorder footage and recent interviews woven together. Some salient scenes include: the primary-school aged Quintanilla children rehearsing and making faces at the camera and Selena laughing alongside guitarist Chris Pérez not long before the two became a couple, stitched alongside a recent interview including his telling of their first “I love yous” exchanged in Laredo.
Archival footage brings viewers to Selena’s humble beginnings, from the foreclosure on the family’s home and restaurant in Lake Jackson after the decline of the town’s economy to a brief flash of a local social services office where the Quintanillas waited to file papers for food stamps.
In an interview shot inside a van chock-full of costumes, Selena giggles as she answers the question: “What’s your final goal?” Her answer was ready: “Mercedes Benz. I don’t care if I have to live in it!” she exclaimed, unaware of the fame and fortune that awaited her.
Castro’s depiction of Selena and the band reveals a goofy, down-to-earth family, even after they struck success. After signing a record deal, the two Quintanilla sisters filmed a tour of their California hotel room: “I am in Long Beach, California, lifestyle of the rich and famous!” Selena yelled, her arms splayed out as she posed in front of the building.
Photos and interviews carefully stitched together also explore the nuances of Tejano identity—the struggle of straddling two identities and two cultures—and the beauty, banality, and occasional blunders of being (or not being) bilingual.
Abraham Quintanilla, Selena’s father, recalls stories of his youth growing up during an era of segregation and anti-Latino sentiment. Although Spanish was his first language, he struggled to speak it fluently decades later when the band was breaking into the Mexican music market in the ’90s. Growing up for part of their childhood in Lake Jackson, the small petrochemical town south of Houston, the children did not feel in touch with their roots, Selena’s brother explained in the film (though that changed when they moved to Corpus Christi).
In one early scene, a Spanish-speaking journalist interviews a teenage Selena, asking about how the band had made their costumes—white denim jumpsuits with bursts of multicolored splatter paint—to which she replied in English: “wet paint!”
“And for the people listening in Mexico?” he asked her in Spanish, encouraging her to explain the provenance of the costumes in the language his audience spoke. “Los paint-amos,” she replied, which was immediately met with the journalist’s laughter.
Later in the film, Castro includes photographs of Selena’s Spanish studying materials, and archival media footage shows the late singer as a young adult confidently expressing herself in both languages in TV interviews.
As for the woman who murdered Selena in 1995, the film essentially ignores her altogether. The film’s exploration of the loss of Selena’s life focused on the family’s grief and the late singer’s legacy. Even 30 years after her death, Selena’s influence remains powerful, in Corpus Christi and far beyond.
As a non-Hispanic Texan with a deep appreciation of Tejano and Latin American music, raised far from South Texas in a Collin County suburb, what struck me most about this movie was the audience’s journey alongside the Quintanilla family. Throughout the film, attendees put their hearts on display. They cheered. They erupted in laughter. Some sobbed, as if Selena were, too, part of their own family. Any mention in the film of Selena breaking down doors for the Latino community, breaking the glass ceiling for women, or breaking into a bilingual music market just before her death was met with thunderous applause and shouts of joy.
As theater workers ushered us out of the Paramount Theater, fans paused for a moment to pose for photos or pay their respects to Selena’s now elderly father, who sat in a wheelchair by the exit. I’d joined a friend of mine and her mother at the screening. The mom, a proud Tejana who raised her kids listening to Selena, was among those who stopped to greet Abraham.
She leaned in. “Thank you for sharing your daughter with us.”
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