A screening of Love Child, a community marketplace, and a post-screening conversation with lead actress Julietta Rodríguez at the Philadelphia Film Society Center on September 12 brought Esperanza Arts Center’s three-part series celebrating Dominican arts and culture to a close. “From Page to Screen” was presented in partnership with Tamo en Cine, the Philadelphia Film Society, and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Film Society Director of Community Engagement Jasmine Hawkins curated the full “From Page to Screen” event at PFS, including the community marketplace that welcomed guests in the lobby before the screening.
Dominican creatives displayed their work and spoke with attendees before the screening. Among them was artist Arianna Cabrera, known professionally as Yung Picari, whose work explores family and Caribbean identity.
One of her pieces, titled Gentleness, is an homage to her great-grandmother, who raised 15 children in the Dominican Republic and became the foundation of their family. Outside her home stood a mango tree that Arianna remembers as a witness to generations of stories, laughter and love.
“She was a gentle woman, but through her I learned that gentleness is not the absence of strength,” Arianna wrote about the piece. “It is resilience.”
Soon after, audiences moved into the theater for La Hija Natural, the 2011 feature directed by Dominican filmmaker Leticia Tonos Paniagua.
When I spoke with Leticia ahead of the series in August, she described Love Child, her first feature, as her most personal film.
“It took me years to understand what I was really trying to say, until I realized it was about loneliness, the universal desire to belong and the emotional wounds left by abandonment,” Leticia said.
The film follows María, a young woman who leaves home after the death of her mother and travels through the Dominican countryside searching for the father she never knew.
Leticia also described the film as a portrait of a rural Dominican world she fears is disappearing.
“I hope Dominicans recognize in the film the world of their mothers and grandmothers,” she told Impacto. “A place that is quietly disappearing before our eyes.”
After the screening, actress Julietta Rodríguez, who plays María, joined the audience for a talkback.
Julietta noted that La Hija Natural was her first film. While studying social communication in Santo Domingo, she learned Leticia was searching for a lead actress and wanted to be involved so badly that she offered to work as a production assistant.
Instead, she was cast as María.
“That’s how my career started,” Julietta said.
She also remembered watching the completed film with her parents for the first time and credited Leticia with making her feel protected while navigating her first feature.
When asked how much she saw herself in María, Julietta said the character represents someone audiences can still recognize throughout the Dominican countryside. Having grown up in La Romana, Julietta said she brought pieces of her own upbringing into the role.
“I put a lot of myself in María, and María gave me a lot of herself,” she said. “I was a María in some part of my life.”
From Arianna’s tribute to her great-grandmother to Leticia’s images of the Dominican countryside and Julietta’s connection to María, the final afternoon of “From Page to Screen” became a reflection on how Dominican stories and memories continue to be carried forward.