Revolution is in the air at the fourth annual Monterey Bay Film Festival, which takes place this Friday and Saturday, April 8-9, with a diverse group of offerings from international filmmakers, teen film students and shorts curated by Sundance Film Festival programmer Mike Plante. The opening night attraction is the local premiere of Revolución, a collaboration by 10 South American directors about the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew Porfirio Diaz.

“It’s made up of 10 films, each 10-minutes long, reflecting on the meaning of the revolution in contemporary Mexico,” says Enid Baxter Blader, chair of CSUMB’s Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department, which sponsors the festival in conjunction with the newly formed Monterey Bay Film Society.

Rodrigo Garcia (the son of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez), who directed 7th and Alvarado, a sequence shot in Los Angeles, will be at the screening, held at 7pm at the Lighthouse Theater, to introduce the film and answer questions afterwards. Garcia will also be at CSUMB the next day to teach a class for CSUMB students and migrant teens who are working with TAT students and faculty in conjunction with the South Monterey County Center for Arts and Technology.

Come 1pm Saturday at CSUMB’s World Theater, the Young Filmmakers Program rolls.This year’s films hail from places as far off as Afghanistan, and as close as Seaside, Marina and Salinas.

Sixteen films, each about five-minutes long, by filmmakers ages 13 to 19, were selected out of more than 300 entries, curated under the guidance of Blader and TAT community outreach coordinator Juan Ramirez.

Entries include idance, by Christopher Marcos about the local hip-hop scene, and Simple English, by TAT alumnus Scott Waldgovel, which mocks stereotypes about immigrants.

Blader’s favorites include an “indescribably hilarious’’ music video created at the Salinas Public Library featuring unicorns against a green screen and an animated film from Afghanistan depicting how a young person’s life was changed by the invasion. A third favorite piece about the Salinas Community School’s outdoor education program includes scenes of kids going out and baiting pigs with Marina mayor Bruce Delgado, hearing about star fish battles as they walk the beaches of Moss Landing and meeting the shepherd who tends to the flock at Ford Ord.

Plante, who will be introducing a selection of shorts grouped together under the title True Stories, at 3pm Saturday, is excited about that program – and the screening of Revolución, which features segments from noted Mexican directors Patricia Riggen and Carlos Reygadas, as well as Garcia and actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

“Omnibus films can be pretty tough going, but this is one of the best I’ve ever seen,” the veteran programmer says. “The producers are either very smart or very lucky – there’s not a dud in the group.’’

He didn’t want to give away the storyline of Garcia’s segment, but said it was shot in a single-slow motion shot, with no narrative or dialogue, but visually linked up Mexico’s past with the issues confronting Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles today.

“None of the films recreate a period piece,’’ he adds. “It’s not a historical film – ‘Here’s Pancho Villa and here’s how we won a battle.’”

Instead, he said, the filmmakers sought to capture and provide a commentary on the different ways in which a revolution that took place more than 100 years ago still has a ripple effect that has been “amplified and warped,” not just in Mexico but in the United States.

Although Plante described some of the segments as “quite melancholy,’’ they eschew an overly lyrical, soft-focus approach. “It’s always very realistic – there are no white people playing Mexicans in this movie.”

For the short film program, the True Stories theme includes animation, documentaries and fiction.

Highlights include Goldthwaite, a semi-documentary by comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite, who took some real-life home movies and made a fake DVD directors commentary track about it as a commentary on the pretentiousness of the whole genre; Shrimp Chicken Fish, a tribute to a Chicago takeout restaurant featured briefly in the Blues Brothers movie, directed by Deborah Streetman; On The Way To The Sea, by Chinese filmmaker Tao Go, about the horrific earthquake that struck China in 2008 (“of course, it’s incredibly timely,” Plante says); and The Pact, by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Nicholas McCarthy, which he describes as “a very tense, sort of subtle, horror story.”

He says the goal is to find fresh approaches, from style to content, for students and film fans to enjoy.

“Not to get too academic, but I try to make sure we show films students can learn from, so they can feel like they’re getting a fresh and new way to tell a story,” Plante says. “And for people who just want to see cool movies, I think they’re very entertaining.”

MONTEREY BAY FILM FESTIVAL happens 7pm Friday, April 8, with Revolution at Lighthouse Cinema, 525 Lighthouse Ave., Pacific Grove ($9 general; $6.50 students) and 1-5 pm Saturday, April 9, at CSUMB World Theatre on Sixth Avenue, Seaside. Free; but reservations are requested (rsvp.csumb.edu.) www.montereybayfilmfestival.com, 582-4580.