Her Source I Rosario Dawson Shares Why ‘Cesar Chavez’ Is Such An Important Film

The Source Magazine caught up with actress Rosario Dawson at “MONTBLANC Celebrates 90 years of Meisterstück” on April 3 at Guastavino’s.

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Montblanc celebrated 90 years of their Meisterstück, the timeless fountain pen, at an intimate reception and dinner with Jérôme Lambert, Chief Executive Officer of Montblanc International. Notables in attendance including Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Penn Badgely, Olivia Palermo, Johannes Huebl, Chanel Iman, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Alex Wek, Madalina Ghenea and Stephen Baldwin were invited to discover the new Meisterstück 90^th Anniversary Collection, featuring four new writing instruments.

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Check out our exclusive interview with Rosario Dawson from the red carpet:

Your new film “Cesar Chavez” is now playing. Speak about collaborating with Director Diego Luna.

Rosario Dawson: I love him, I think he’s remarkable as a film maker. I’ve never worked with him as an actress so I can’t really say actually what that’s like, but being a film maker is his calling. He knows what he’s doing, I’ve worked with some of the best directors on the planet, Oliver Stone to Spike Lee, and he’s just incredible. You really have to know your stuff and manage everybody, it’s a short window of time you have to create your vision. It’s a very collaborative effort, you need to speak that language, there’s a very particular language you have to speak, and he speaks it fluently, and I hope to see a lot more films coming out of him because he’s very talented.

Why was that such an important project for you to be a part of?

Rosario Dawson: There’s very few opportunities that I’v had over the years, to sort match my advocacy with my art, and this was an opportunity for me to talk about things I’m most passionate about. About people’s ability, not what you should do, but what you can do. There’s so much that we can do, there are so many ways that we can make our indelible mark on history, and we miss it every day because we’re not told we’re as important as we actually are. When you look at history all the time, it’s those people who are nonviolent moments, the people who are first to break the glass ceiling, and the first to fly, first to travel, the first to create something. Those are the people that we still admire today, they weren’t necessarily the richest or the most beautiful, the most privileged, they just did something extraordinary as ordinary people. We are all capable of that, and we forget that so often, we take it for granted, and I really love people like that, who have shown us that we can all be a part of something really great, and that’s what I was excited about being a part of. The storytelling of that because it’s very recent history. We’ve talked about Martin Luther King, we’ve talked about Gandhi. But Cesar Chavez led the largest nonviolent movements the world has ever seen and that’s something that’s really important for us to recognize and see ourselves as being a part of. It wasn’t just the farm workers coming together, it was also the housewives, saying “You know what, I’m not going to buy those grapes” for literally years, and joining this movement. It was the millions of people who all joined this. Not just Cesar, not just Dolores, not just the farmers, not just the housewives, it went into through and out of the White House and into Europe. It’s a big deal and the fact that we’re not teaching that in a grand way is really too bad, and it just shows us what we’re capable of. So “Cesar Puede,” is not about Cesar, it’s not about Dolores, who created the phrase … it’s about all those people who knocked on doors and made it their business every single day to make a difference and that’s what its about. If we can start to hold on to that, we can achieve anything and everything, and that’s a beautiful thing.