Preceded by short: Columbus on Trial (Lourdes Portillo, USA, 1992): Local filmmaker Lourdes Portillo uses the medium to bring the famed explorer to modern times and put him on trial in the year of the quintcentennial. A lot of "politically correct" ideas are brought before the bench, as well, in this humorous fantasy. (18 mins, Color, 16mm, From the artist) Ever since West Side Story one might assume that there are no roles for Puerto Rican actors. To land an acting gig, comic monologuist Luis (pronounced "Lewis") Caballero, the star of The Puerto Rican Mambo, had to write himself a role. PRM is a series of hilarious autobiographical vignettes that wreaks havoc with the misnomers attached to Puerto Rican life in New York City. Caballero challenges the dominant culture's reductive P.R. composite of a rum-drinking, uneducated, sexually aggressive window-washer. He tosses these stereotypes around with the agility of a Puerto Rican outfielder (another stereotype), always prefacing his social mishaps with, "This is a true story. It happened to me." Caballero's Mambo has got humor galore, but it never sidesteps the meanness of discrimination. -Steve Seid