{"id":44458,"date":"2025-07-06T22:37:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T22:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/44458\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T22:37:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T22:37:13","slug":"philadelphia-latino-arts-and-film-festival-2025-comes-to-a-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/44458\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Latino Arts and Film Festival 2025 comes to a close"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

For the 14th year, the Philadelphia Latino Arts and Film Festival<\/a> concluded its six-week run Sunday with a closing ceremony celebrating the breadth of Latino culture. The festival included a variety of film screenings, performances and other exhibitions highlighting Latino culture and spreading political messages through art.\n<\/p>\n

A small crowd of people sat as they watched \u201cLaguna Mental,\u201d a mystery film set in Aculeo, Chile, directed by Crist\u00f3bal Arteaga Rozas<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Mar\u00e1ngeli Mej\u00eda-Rabell, 57, serves as festival director and chief curator. Born in Puerto Rico and a Philadelphia resident for 37 years, she has led the event for over a decade, shaping its vision and cultural footprint in the city.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cOur festival is grounded and rooted on community building and we\u2019re here to celebrate the great work of all the Latine creatives and just bring community together,\u201d Mej\u00eda-Rabell said.\n<\/p>\n

She said this year is especially important for Latino artists due to the \u201cpolitical state.\u201d Some exhibitions expressed political messages or symbols of the difficulties of immigration and the suppression of women in the arts.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou feel a different kind of energy,\u201d Mej\u00eda-Rabell said. \u201cI think that community spaces have become much more critical, given the climate and everything that we\u2019re navigating individually and collectively and as an organization. You can see in all of our materials, we spread love, not hate.\u201d
\n\"AA line of exhibitions at 2025\u2019s Philadelphia Latino Arts and Film Festival (Vida Lashgari\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Mej\u00eda-Rabell began her journey as an artist through music and being inspired by different famous Latino artists such as Rub\u00e9n Blades<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

On another corner of the festival, multimedia journalist and producer Jennifer Mota, 33, curated an exhibition of Judy Santos, a pioneering voice in bachata, a Latino music genre long dominated by men.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that one of the projects that I wanted to do with this residency was to tell the story of Julie Santos, who is the phenomenal voice in a lot of the Aventura<\/a> bachata tracks,\u201d Mota said. \u201cEveryone knows her voice, but a lot of people don\u2019t know her story.\u201d
\n\"AnAn exhibition showcasing different critical stages in Judy Santos\u2019 life at 2025\u2019s Philadelphia Latino Arts and Film Festival (Vida Lashgari\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Her exhibition depicted different stages and pockets of the personality of Santos\u2019 life, from her time as a cheerleader in high school to showcasing her original outfit in a recent performance with the band Aventura.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGive people their flowers when they\u2019re alive,\u201d Mota said as she wiped away tears. \u201cI think that we often wait \u2019til it\u2019s too late, especially in music. And I really wanted to do something while she was alive.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,12054,34525,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-44458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-film-festival","10":"tag-latino-community","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114808687606780413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}