L.A. Stories and the Video Essay

The process of making my first video essay was empowering. My video essay, “L.A. Stories”, brings together the creative work of Gil Cuadros to my academic writing on HIV/AIDS in L.A. My writing on Cuadros and his creative force continues to expand my imagination and continues to guide my scholarship. I am grateful for this connection and humbled by how his work continues to influence and challenge my way of thinking of academic institutions, of my own communities, and of the self.
For this video essay I start with footage of a 1988 interview of Cuadros home videotaped by his close friend, Chicana Photographer, Laura Aguilar. Aguilar and Cuadros met in their early 20s and sustained a lifelong friendship. Aguilar’s early experimentations in photography were supported by Cuadros as he traveled with her to different spaces in L.A. as she documented his history and the history of a Queer Latino/a Los Angeles. They lived nearby each other, attended the same high school and both took classes at East L.A. City College. As artists from L.A. they supported each other’s work and shared their creative ideas with each other. Their work is important to me and is vital to my queer Chicano consciousness; they are the roots of my own history and they encompass my queer Chicano lineage of Los Angeles. I grew up in the surrounding spaces Cuadros writes about and the city that Aguilar has documented in her photography. The section of the interview I am using for this video essay shows Cuadros talking about his partner John. Cuadros talks about the fastness of illness of AIDS in 1987. He talks about losing john to AIDS.
For this video essay I also decided to interview Aguilar from her front porch in the city of Rosemead. She brought out a cartoon illustration of Gil and John and a photograph she took of Cuadros when he was in his early 20s. This section of the video essay shows Aguilar speak of John’s death and Cuadros’ early process of writing. In his book, City of God, Cuadros writes “At the end of 1987, when my lover John died, I was given two years to live according to my doctor’s estimate. Writing literally saved or at least extended my life. Still I could not have done it without the guidance and support of my much loved teacher Terry Wolverton”. Aguilar refers to this evolution of writing and shares the story of how she urged Cuadros to take a writing workshop led by Terry Wolverton, for people with HIV, at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in 1988. Cuadros published his collection in 1994 through City Lights Books. His work has been published in various anthologies with an upcoming publication in August 2013. He passed away from complications of AIDS in 1996.
For the last part of this video essay I took footage of a street corner in East Los Angeles, specifically at the famous Whittier Blvd sign situated on Whittier Blvd and Arizona Street. I wanted to trace the streets mentioned in a poem by Cuadros titled, “There Are Places You Don’t Walk At Night, Alone”. This poem is written in three parts. This is a poem of travel, where the narrator of the poem moves through three different sections of L.A. Each part begins with specific streets of each section in Los Angeles where the narrator of the poem experiences forms of violence targeted at his sexuality and at a friend who is HIV+. I travelled and took footage of the three sections of L.A. mentioned but only used the first section for this video essay. This experience was both sacred and surreal. I listened to an audio recording of Cuadros reciting this poem as I travelled through each section of L.A. mentioned in the poem. I kept having past and present sensations of memory fueled by Cuadros’ creative voice and fused with my own creative process for this video essay. Right now I cannot find the words to articulate the feelings, visions, and thoughts that came through as I traveled from East L.A. to Silverlake to Pasadena in my car and walked the streets that Cuadros writes about. It was a past uniting with the present through the channel of creativity.
The most difficult aspect in doing this video essay was not the technical aspect (which I feared tremendously) but the fact that I originally had well over 15 minutes of what was assigned to be a 3-5 minute video essay. And I had over 100 ideas of how I wanted to create the video essay. For this reason I had to edit a lot and cut the last two sections of the poem and its corresponding footage. In reviewing the video essay I question the way I end the interview footage, particularly the first two interviews regarding the narrative of Cuadros’ partner John. I question if I gave John’s narrative justice by only showing the clips I utilized. I am also questioning if I am giving the viewer too many sections of the video essay in a short amount of time. My goal was to show other histories regarding AIDS that are not usually illuminated in the AIDS narrative. I wanted to show stories from the city I grew up in along with the stories of people with AIDS. I wanted to recall a past that continues to be pertinent in the Latino communities of Los Angeles. I will attempt a new video essay where I only focus on Cuadros’ poem and include all three parts of the poem and the sections of the city I filmed. I am very much looking forward to continue this work through the video essay. Through the video essay I discovered a new way of writing, a new way of presenting my scholarship. It is empowering to see my academic writing visually.

The video essay can be found in youtube at