La Bamba (film)
1987 biographical film by Luis Valdez
La Bamba is a 1987 American biographical drama film written and directed by Luis Valdez. The film follows the life and short-lived musical career of American Chicano rock and roll star Ritchie Valens. The film stars Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, Elizabeth Peña, Danielle von Zerneck and Joe Pantoliano. The film also covers the effect that Valens' career had on the lives of his half-brother Bob Morales, his girlfriend Donna Ludwig, and the rest of his family. The film is titled after a traditional Mexican folk song of the same name, which Valens transformed into a rock and roll rendition in 1958.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “La Bamba (film)” as 1987 biographical film by Luis Valdez. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1987 biographical film by Luis Valdez. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 1958.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “La Bamba (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.