The Duality of Color in My Family, Mi Familia
Gregory Nava’s work as a Mexican-American film maker (of Mexican and Basque heritage) brought into focus several films that helped center Latinx people in their own stories that did not automatically cast them in negative stereotypical role such as criminals. While he may be better known as the director of the biopic of Selena, of slain popstar Selena Quintanilla-Perez starring a young Jennifer Lopez that helped launched her career, it is his film El Norte that caught the attention of Hollywood and most of the film world. One of his earlier efforts as a filmmaker, El Norte, a film about two siblings and their travels from Guatemala to Los Angeles managed to even get nominated by the Academy for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen at the 1985 Oscars.
After Nava caught the attention of Hollywood, My Family was his first feature film working in the Hollywood industry which led to more work as director, writer and producer. Film critic Roger Ebert once wrote of this film, saying “It’s an epic, the kind of bighearted, ambitious film that is rarely made these days — a film like “Gone With the Wind” or “The Godfather,” with a big canvas and lots of characters and a sense of destiny tracing itself down through generations”.* My Family is an offering that has a narrative easy to follow through its attention to detail through editing and vividly enhanced…
