Visual Communications

Template:TOCnestleft Visual Communications was a film company closely associated with the League of Revolutionary Struggle.

Linda Mabalot connection

Inspired by the work of Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan, who wrote movingly about the experiences of Filipino immigrant farm workers, Linda Mabalot became an activist in the Asian Pacific American student movement while a pre-med major at UC Davis. She graduated in 1975 with a degree in biology, but her desire to make a film about Bulosan eventually led her to Los Angeles.

She met Duane Kubo and Eddie Wong, two of the founding members of Visual Communications, while walking in Little Tokyo one day in 1977. She joined their collective of artists and filmmakers to direct and produce a project about the history of Filipinos in California. The result was a documentary titled "Manong," which focused on Filipino farm workers in the Central Valley and on Philip Veracruz, a Filipino American pioneer in the United Farm Workers movement.

"It was one of the earliest documentaries about Filipino Americans," said Cas Tolentino, an administrative law judge who taught UCLA's first class on the Filipino American experience and knew Mabalot for more than 25 years.