By David Fear

LONG BEFORE ANYONE unleashed the dogs of amores, raised Victor Vargas, or said anything about anyone's mama, there was Cine Acción, a group of Chicano media artists and filmmakers dedicating to fostering a forum of self-expression and support in the Bay Area. It's the sponsor of the 11th annual ¡Cine Latino!, the oldest U.S. film festival devoted solely to giving Latino perspectives a platform regardless of any modern-day cinema novos, south-of-the-border new waves, or hyped-up explosions to "validate" them. The event's tag line promises everything "from reel visionaries to digital rebels," with a focus on capturing as many diverse viewpoints as possible: programs devoted to youth-oriented and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender shorts return, and features ranging from Canada to Colombia provide signals from any number of geographical beacons.

Pirate transmissions play a central part in several of the festival's best offerings – quite literally, in the case of Radio Favela – Oma Onda No Ar (Something in the Air). This breezy Brazilian comedy is based on the true story of a politically conscious youth who sets up a low-watt community radio station in one of São Paulo's predominantly black neighborhoods. His antiauthority tirades and hip-hop barrio news bulletins eventually brand him a revolutionary with the local police while providing him folk-hero status among the common folk. A pop B-side to the gritty favela epic City of God, the film's light touch cuts its class-system desperation with a feathery infectiousness and buoyancy; the crossover appeal is undeniable, yet it never downplays the darker realities of Brazil's high crime rate or the harassment and persecution so prevalent in the nation's slums.

Reality, in its starkest and most horrifying form, is the central currency of Images of a Dictatorship, the crown jewel of the festival's "A Call to Memory, Chile: 30 Años Después" program. Documentarian Patricio Henriquez's portrait of repression comes solely from Chilean news footage of the last quarter century, smuggled out of the country by a dissident camera operator still living in Santiago. The result is like an endless nightmare loop, with scenes of friendly demonstrations morphing into police free-for-alls and random bystander beatings unfolding again and again before an unblinking eye. All the while, the country's "leader" mugs for photo ops and blames torture victims for their wounds. As a document of post-Allende Chile, it's an invaluable record of a nauseating historical tragedy; as a documentary, the testament not only captures an injustice to the Chilean people 24 frames per second but also offers the chance to memorialize those who were martyred for a true fight for democracy.

On the flip side of the coin comes the mockumentary Speeder Kills, an autobiographical guffaw at the folly of artists by former San Francisco resident (and Bay Guardian contributor) Jim Mendiola. A Rockefeller Grant recipient who left the Bay Area for his hometown of San Antonio, the Mexican American Mendiola chronicles the story of Amalia ... a Rockefeller Grant recipient who has left the Bay Area for San Antonio. Thousands of dollars in debt and nowhere near completing her proposed film project, Amalia decides instead to make a documentary on her neighbors, local punk band Speeder. Shot in shaky-cam D.V. style and full of jagged narrative breaks (Mendiola has named Richard Lester as a primary influence), the film moves at such a, well, speedy clip that it skims over any stylistic crudeness through sheer momentum. Its parody of rock clichés is often spot-on, but it's Mendiola's knack for blending personal filmmaking with an ability to capture San Antonio's Tex-Mex environment to a tee that makes it such a find.

You can connect the three films through a common ethnicity, of course, but what really binds the trio, and the festival's schedule overall, is the DIY feeling of getting your story out there come hell or high water. Having been denied a voice for so long, Latino filmmakers have learned to fight for equal time. They have provided the frequencies, and ¡Cine Latino! has given them a tower to transmit them, bending any number of multihued visions into a backward prism and letting them all emerge as one unbroken stream of light.