The Moon Song of Assassination

7 minutes • video • 2010

This is a “docu-legend” about Tex-Mex “Tejano” music singer Selena, who in 1995 at the brink of crossover success, was shot and killed at age 24 by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar. An international news story, the murder created a unique cultural moment of massive collective Latino mourning and thrust Chicano visibility into the forefront of mainstream American consciousness.

Forerunner, if not cause, of the “Latin wave” pop explosion that would launch such stars as Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, Selena’s death became a watershed moment for Latinos in the United States, leaving a media legacy that would extend far beyond the music industry. Using appropriated news accounts, performance footage, and 60s-era NASA imagery, this film tells the story of Selena’s ascension into America’s pantheon of martyred cultural figures — a moment when “The Big Bang began not with a bang and not with a boom but with the biddi biddi bom bom of Yolanda’s gun.”