Blurred Perceptions Seen in Sharp Focus

Jesse Lerner and Ruben Ortiz-Torres ask a big question in their experimental film, “Frontierland/Fronterilandia”: Where do Mexico and the U.S. merge in the development of the Latino experience in this country?

It’s one that sociologists, historians and pop culturists have been batting around for years, since Mexican Americans became an economic and political force in the United States. Unlike more scholarly discussions, however, “Frontierland/Fronterilandia” isn’t devoted to reaching airtight conclusions; it uses diverse imagery to try to coax an awareness out of viewers.

The 77-minute, award-winning film screens for the first time in Orange County tonight at the Huntington Beach Art Center. It’s a peculiar, sometimes distorted, frequently arty and revealing travelogue of points where the two realities intersect.

Lerner and Ortiz-Torres’ technique relies on a loose conceptualization where scenes, monologues and re-creations seek to coexist from the first frames. This can throw you off--there’s much to assimilate, and the cinematic links are fragile--but after a while what the filmmakers are getting at becomes clear.

It’s a culture in flux, and the filmmakers’ approach is appropriately variegated. The influences that formed the Mexican American experience they’re describing are as spontaneous and often as arbitrary as their movie-making style. The other benefit in this free-form approach is that it practically precludes boredom--when one passage starts to lag, another elbows it out of the way.

“Frontierland/Fronterilandia” starts with a fairly ordinary encapsulation of the origins of the Aztec culture, perhaps the most important elements of Mexico’s ancient history. The Aztecs migrated from our Southwest to Tenochitlan (where Mexico City is now) and prospered until Cortez and his conquistadors conquered their world. The migration is the first major connection between Mexico and its northern neighbor.

From this, the movie takes more impulsive, sometimes expressionistic paths. There are straightforward documentary passages (a sardonic look at the “mission revival” architecture movement in California and Santa Barbara’s annual fiesta in which locals pretend they’re colonial Mexicans), but they give way to flashier takes on Mexico City punk rockers, the cult of the Beatles in Mexico and Latino rappers in the States.

In one scene, members of the group Indigena strut to a thumping rap beat and shout, “You don’t know, you don’t even know . . . our heritage!” One of the guys relaxes a moment and tells the camera, “We [Latinos] are not the eagle, and we are not the wetback. . . . we’ve been here for 1,000 years.”

There’s almost a defiance in that, and it’s one of the more obvious threads running through the film. If we can make room for tacos and cervezas here, the movie seems to imply, we’d better make space for the racial pride bubbling up among young Latinos.

Although rarely didactic, it’s clear that Lerner and Ortiz-Torres believe the U.S. embraces Mexican culture without knowing what it’s really about.

As a telling example, they harshly photograph the tacky, Mexican-flavored theme park, South of the Border, in Florida and include inane, self-impeaching commentary from an unidentified guy apparently working for the attraction.

A valid point, but the whiff of superiority is unsavory. The filmmakers lean the Mexican way through much of “Frontierland/Fronterilandia,” and they don’t obscure biases when they pop up. But this isn’t “60 Minutes,” and you should realize going in that nobody said they had to be evenhanded all the time.

* Jesse Lerner and Ruben Ortiz-Torres’ 1995 film, “Frontierland/Fronterilandia,” screens tonight at the Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St. 8 p.m. $2 to $4. (714) 374-1650.