ASCO film poster
ASCO film poster
Coming up at Cactus Club (2496 S. Wentworth Ave.) on Wednesday, June 3 is an 8 p.m. screening of the 2025 documentary ASCO: Without Permission. Directed by Travis Gutiérrez Singer, the film follows the titular East Los Angeles-based Chicano avant-garde group who merged activism with radical art-making in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Presented by the Cactus+ Moving Image series, the screening will immediately follow Cactus Book Club and is the only one currently booked in the area so folks should grab their tickets quickly. A description of the film reads that it is “more than a profile—it’s a reimagining of what’s possible in art and cinema, celebrating iconoclasts who were decades ahead of their time.”
“ASCO has happened to find me in many ways that never stopped changing me and making me believe in art again,” Moving Image coordinator Mace Guzman says, who first came across the documentary by way of a community film center in their abuela’s hometown in the Rio Grande Valley. Having spent seven years going through arts programs in college, Guzman had never once seen Chicano work before coming across them in their own studies. “This film is one step in bringing larger visibility to the works of Chicano artists, especially outside of areas like L.A.”
Much like the collective it is named for, ASCO: Without Permission subverts documentary expectations by also indulging new work influenced by the revolutionary art group. “One of the many remarkable things about ASCO was their commitment to transforming the spaces around them and their refusal to be kept out as well as kept in the traditional art spaces,” Guzman adds. “Their approach over the years from No Movies, cinematic minimalism and performance art in resistance to colonial violence serve as examples for people of all backgrounds of the endless ways we can re-engage our surroundings and establish modes of resistance through art.”
$10-15 sliding scale tickets are available here. Visit the ASCO: Without Permission website to learn more.
