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Speeder Kills
Starring Amalia Ortiz, Xelina Flores, Melissa Flores, Kat Perez, Brian Lieb
Written and Directed by
Jim Mendiola
(2005 LPA Fellow)
Produced by Faith Radle
Edited by Jim Mendiola and Spencer Parsons
A BadAss Pictures production, 2003
84 minutes
Winner of the "Visionary Spirit award" at the
Sacramento Festival of Cinema
Selected by SiTV
(Dish 159)
for their
Not So Foreign Filmmakers Showcase
Selected for the prestigious Narrative Competition at the
LA Film Festival
Reviewed by Alison Fraunhar
The Santa Barbara Independent, april 15 2004
Of the fascinating and rarely seen films featured in the Latino CineMedia Festival, [this] offer surprising and refreshing insights into the enduring power of rock and roll, and film, as media of communication, self- and cultural expression, rebellion, and activism.
Speeder Kills deftly blends documentary and fiction filmmaking as it relates the symbolic hijacking of the Fiesta (a San Antonio tradition honoring the conquest of the Alamo by Anglo settlers) by a local Chicano punk-metal band and their videographer, a young Chicana video artist named Amalia Ortiz (played by the real-life Amalia Ortiz). Ortiz narrates a satiric yet ultimately fond tale of middle-class Latino culture, the politics of the art world and academia, San Antonio civic boosterism, folk art, and MTV; the film reserves a sharper critique for the idea of Chicanos celebrating the mythology of the Alamo. It is a witty and delicious meditation on art, culture, and identity.
CineFestival explored not stereotypes, but complexities and nuances of Latino culture
By Gilbert Garcia
San Antonio Current, February 27 2003
Mendiola's new film, Speeder Kills, had just made its world premiere at the 26th annual CineFestival, only hours after he had finished editing it. The movie is a fictionalized documentary within a documentary, in which a local Chicano punk band called Speeder disrupts the annual Fiesta celebration by dressing as parade queens, hijacking a float and bashing out the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" to confused parade watchers.
In the world of Speeder Kills, Fiesta is a bad joke, every bit as absurd as Miss Togar's disciplinary policies in Rock & Roll High School: a media hypefest in which moneyed Anglos convince Latinos to celebrate the fact that 19th-century, coonskin-capped frontiersmen took Texas away from Mexico. You could sense the conspiratorial exhilaration in the packed theater every time Speeder mercilessly mocked another Fiesta tradition.
So it wasn't a shock that the one post-screening comment from a Speeder audience member wasn't really a question, but a declaration. "Thank you," the viewer emphatically said, "for telling the truth about Fiesta."
The Speeder screening brought into focus one of the best things about CineFestival: the way it offers stories from the inside, for an audience that understands the references. While it shouldn't necessarily be such a remarkable thing to see Latinos depicted as complex and contadictory, it's still a novelty in 2003...
"CineFestival is important for Latino filmmakers because you get it," [Jesse] Borrego said. "The Raza in San Antonio always gets it. You're the sounding board for what we want to represent to the rest of the world"...
