“ASCO has inspired all of us,” says San Cha, an LA-based artist featured in the SXSW documentary, ASCO: Without Permission. “The DIY ethos of it, the doing with whatever you have, and imagining cinematic worlds like, ‘This is us!’ And it has been very inspiring.”

ASCO, a Chicano performance and conceptual art group, began on the streets of East Los Angeles in the early 1970’s. At the time, the popular press was calling Chicanos criminals and labeling our communities as less than. Sick and disgusted at the war in Vietnam and their position in the United States, four Chicano artists created Asco. The group responded to the political unrest and social turmoil in the only way they knew to express themselves – with art. But, like many things in the Latino community, ASCO isn’t just one thing. It was performance art. Sculptures. No Movies movies.

Put simply, ASCO showed Chicanos in control of their own public image. The act was revolutionary and it’s no stretch to say they built an entire movement in the world of art and culture. It was not only ahead of its time, it changed not only us Latinos, but Americans forever.

The artists of ASCO would go from tagging the walls of the Los Angeles County Museum with spray paint one year to being celebrated with their very own exhibition at the famed LACMA in 2011.

It was from a book on that exhibition that Mexican actor, director, and producer Gael García Bernal was introduced to ASCO. “I remember going completely into it [the book] and realizing page by page, how I had no idea that this existed,” said Garcìa Bernal. “I am from Mexico. I live in Mexico. I admire, and I’m immersed all the time with full curiosity about the Chicano experience, of the Chicano identity, because it is a strand of Mexican culture.”

Part of the Chicano identity, both then and now, is confronting systemic racism and all that comes with it. Enter the documentary, ASCO: Without Permission, written and directed by Mexican-American Travis Gutiérrez Senger. “I feel like that’s one of the things that drew me to ASCO’s stories, are the things that they were fighting against,” Senger told Latina Media Co at the film’s SXSW premiere. “Whether that’s police brutality, exclusion in the media, or misrepresentation in the media – I felt like those things are just as pertinent today as they were then.”

He isn’t wrong. And what is more, he isn’t alone. In addition to Garcìa Bernal, Diego Luna also serves as an Executive Producer on the documentary. Bernal told us one-on-one moments before the film screened for audiences. “The [Chicano] struggle has been very tough and very real and this identity hasn’t been able to express itself freely. Chicanos in the United States need to behave well according to the system. And whenever somebody behaves bad[ly], they completely ostracize them. They silence their voices.”

ASCO the art group didn’t choose silence, they chose to create loudly. ASCO: Without Permission follows in their footsteps. And, true to the title, they did it without asking. “What they did was they started to do things without permission,” Bernal says. “And I really think that we have to behave badly in order to unmask the constant racism, the systematic silencing of [their] voices, and the demonization of the other, [or] of the migrant.”

Senger agrees, “I think that’s one of the cool things about the project is it gives us a way to maybe think about how to address and confront those issues through art making and filmmaking.”

In the documentary, Senger interviews other prominent Latinos in entertainment – like Zoe Saldaña and Michael Pena – about the impact of the movement. While the original pioneers give you a front-row seat to their art, motivations, and inspirations.

ASCO: Without Permission does more than offer up an oral and visual history. It reveals how the movement of ASCO is not only alive and surviving, it’s thriving. The film highlights current day artists who are taking the lead from ASCO’s original members and injecting it into the art they are making today.

San Cha, one of the artists profiled in the documentary, also spoke with Latina Media Co. “The politics really informs everything in the work and why we’re making it. Why it feels like it needs to happen now,” said San Cha. “I wrote this very lesbianic, polyamorous opera that I still am inspired by. In a way, [it’s] very political with gender and talking about telenovelas and what we see as a heteronormative archetype. My mom being a farm worker and an immigrant – it’s all in there, but in these ways that aren’t so in your face – it’s just part of the art, part of the experience of being a Latina.”

ASCO: Without Permission manages the same trick, calling us to action by showing us of a truth of our community – Chicanos’ history of activism, creation, and rebellion.

“I think that because of the political issues, because of the art making, because of the way it reimagines Hollywood – which we’re still fighting to really see ourselves,” says Senger. “It makes the film absolutely urgent, even vital, today.”