MOVIE • 1989

Flight of the Dove

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A portrait of the Portuguese-American dairy-farming community in the Chino Valley of southern California. This is one of the first films ever to document the experiences and culture of Portuguese Americans. The film explores in depth the community's most important annual celebration, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, showing how it preserves community solidarity through its emphasis on shared cultural values. The evolution of the feast is traced from its origins in the Azores to the festival that is now celebrated in California. The changes in the festival are shown to have helped bridge the gap between immigrants and their children; it now functions to reinforce the identity of its participants as both Portuguese and American.