Cine Fest Latino, the Power of Latino Identity in Boston Screens

During Hispanic Heritage Month, everything within the Latino community is about strengthening ties as well as spreading the best of Hispanic culture by nurturing the artistic landscape in the U.S. And that is what CineFest Latino Boston Film Festival seems to be about with the showcase of talented directors, voices and stories from Latin America and Spain to show the diversity and complexity that "being Hispanic" means.

The organizers of the festival's mission was not only to celebrate and bring together the Latino community but also to promote necessary cultural changes and conversations, congregating diverse narratives and nuances that explore the Latino identity and the problems that its people go through in their countries and in the U.S. as well.

"CineFest Latino Boston Film Festival is committed to using the power of film to break stereotypes, bring cultures and communities together and reveal the complex issues affecting the Latinx community in the United States, as well as communities in Latin America and Spain." says the Festival website.

The first annual in-person phase was Sept. 27-Oct 5. However, the selection of its lineup began in March, when founder and executive director, Sabrina Avilés set a selection of 30 films (15 shorts and 15 features). The festival's lineup was based on unheard stories from a variety of territories like Mexico, Puerto Rico ("La pecera"), Peru ("Diógenes"), Brazil/Argentina ("Charcoal"), Chile ("The Eternal Memory"), Colombia ("Todas las flores), Spain ("La Singla"), as well as U.S. ("You Were My First Boyfriend) among other films produced between 2020 and 2023.

Among the short films, there are also countries represented as Panama and Ecuador. Genres range from documentaries, fiction and pieces that celebrate music. The catalog included several dance films, two highlighting Flamenco and one about Tango music from Argentina.

According to Avilés, in an interview by GBH, the issues covered by this indie film festival explore themes that cut across Latin identity in general, beyond the particular problems of each country or region, such as immigration, loneliness or loss of affections:

"...there's a lot of themes around solitude and loneliness and being an immigrant here. There's themes around being an immigrant in the United States and not feeling quite like you're part of the United States. There is another film around having lost a husband, so the themes of that program was about solitude in its many iterations. Hence the title, "Cien Años de Soledad"—"One Hundred Years of Solitude", which talks about solitude, but it also hearkens to the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez." said Avilés.

"I thought it was an opportunity to really merge those two worlds and create something that I see hopefully morphing into a festival that not only embraces issues around social justice, and around the challenges that we face as a community, but also that truly celebrates the arts and who we are as artists. Because a lot of times, people first find out about the Latino culture through arts and culture. And then after that, after they've gotten their foot in the door if you will, then they find out that we are a rich and very complex group of people." she said.

Beyond certain themes that run like an invisible thread through the various identities that make up the Latino community, the festival seeks to bring to Boston screens some unique and metaphorical visual narratives that can account for the differences, complexities and sometimes contradictions that "Latinos" as a culture entails. In a TV interview for GBH News, Avilés also points out that the curation of the stories sought to reverse cinema's mainstream narrative that portrays the Latino identity in a stereotyped perspective.