A historical novel by UCI Chicano/Latino studies professor Alejandro Morales has been adapted into a documentary. Titled after his 1988 book, The Brick People chronicles the growth of Southern California through the story of the Simons Brick Factory and the Mexican immigrant brick layers who helped build much of Los Angeles. The film premiered in Irvine in October and has since been screened at the Los Angeles Latino Book & Family Festival in Dominguez Hills, Houston, Occidental College and at three different events in Montebello, the site where the Simons family’s largest 350 acre factory and small township once stood. Plans are in the works for a UCI-hosted screening in the spring.

Learn more about the film, produced by Art Kirsch, directed and edited by Mike Kirsch, and screenplay and script by Morales’ daughter, Alessandra Morales-Gunz.