Pleasantville Film Screening & Panel with Artist Frank Romero

The Museum of Latin American Art will host a special screening of the 1998 film, Pleasantville. This American teen fantasy comedy-drama film is written, co-produced, and directed by Gary Ross and stars Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, J. T. Walsh, and Reese Witherspoon. The mural "Pleasantville" by renowned Chicano muralist Frank Romero features prominently in the film. In the black and white movie, the introduction of Romero’s mural, with its vibrant colors and images, ties the themes of the film and musical composition into an artistic highlight. MOLAA, in collaboration with the Artist and his studio, will publicly conserve the artwork throughout the first half of 2025.

The panel discussion following the screening will include Romero as well as Pleasantville production designer Jeannine Oppewall and indepedent curator Rafael Barrientos Martínez. The panel will be moderated by Michael Ordoña, pop culture journalist for the LA Times and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association.

Food and cocktails will be available for purchase.

A pioneer of the Chicana/o art movement, Frank Romero (b. 1941, Los Angeles) is counted among the earliest and most influential of its participants. Romero’s visual explorations of Chicanidad have gone on to become cornerstones of this period in art history that arose from El Movimiento, the social and political civil rights movement that began in the early 1970s. With a career spanning seven decades, Romero uses various mediums, such as paintings, murals, neon, and sculptures, to explore themes that relate to the Chicano experience, his Latin American heritage, and popular culture, creating works that are reflective of the multiculturalism that is East Los Angeles.