’. . . and the earth did not swallow him’

Severo Perez’s 1994 film of Tomas Rivera’s classic Chicano novel is as sincere and earnest as the Mexican American family it depicts with such love and respect. Set in the early ‘50s with an impeccable sense of time and place, it is an epic story of survival in which family, communal life and the church are the source of all things inspirational. With Daniel Valdez, center. (KCET Wednesday at 9 p.m.).