This double bill of near-feature-length shorts explores the lives of two icons of music and movies who rose to fame in the 1970s — singer Linda Ronstadt and actor Valerie Perrine — and who are both now coping with Parkinson’s disease.
“Linda and the Mockingbirds” is a song-soaked, foot-stomping trip straight to the heart of what it means to be Mexican, and to be American, and the complex joy of being both at the same time. Linda is Linda Ronstadt, and the Mockingbirds are Los Cenzontles (“mockingbirds” in the Nahuatl language), a band and a music academy for young people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ronstadt, musician Jackson Browne, and a busload of Cenzontles travel from Arizona to the little town of Banámichi in Sonora, Mexico, where Ronstadt’s grandfather was born. Eugene Rodriguez, a third-generation Mexican-American and musician, founded the Cenzontles 30 years ago to reconnect working-class kids with the dignity and beauty of their ancestral music and culture.
- Year2020
- Runtime40 minutes
- LanguageEnglish & Spanish
- CountryMexico; U.S.
- DirectorJames Keach
This double bill of near-feature-length shorts explores the lives of two icons of music and movies who rose to fame in the 1970s — singer Linda Ronstadt and actor Valerie Perrine — and who are both now coping with Parkinson’s disease.
“Linda and the Mockingbirds” is a song-soaked, foot-stomping trip straight to the heart of what it means to be Mexican, and to be American, and the complex joy of being both at the same time. Linda is Linda Ronstadt, and the Mockingbirds are Los Cenzontles (“mockingbirds” in the Nahuatl language), a band and a music academy for young people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ronstadt, musician Jackson Browne, and a busload of Cenzontles travel from Arizona to the little town of Banámichi in Sonora, Mexico, where Ronstadt’s grandfather was born. Eugene Rodriguez, a third-generation Mexican-American and musician, founded the Cenzontles 30 years ago to reconnect working-class kids with the dignity and beauty of their ancestral music and culture.
- Year2020
- Runtime40 minutes
- LanguageEnglish & Spanish
- CountryMexico; U.S.
- DirectorJames Keach