Cinema of Colombia

Cinema of Colombia refers to film productions made in Colombia, or considered Colombian for other reasons. Colombian cinema, like any national cinema, is a historical process with industrial and artistic aspects.
Historically, Colombian cinema has not been profitable as an industry, which has prevented continuing production and employing filmmakers and technicians. During the first decades of the 20th century, there were some companies that attempted to maintain a constant level of production, but the lack of economic support and strong foreign competition ended up ruining the initiatives. In the 1980s, the newly created state-run Cinematographic Development Company (Compañía de Fomento Cinematográfico FOCINE) allowed some productions to be carried out. However, the company had to be liquidated in the early 1990s.
In 1997 the Colombian Congress approved Law 397 of Article 46, or the General Law of Culture, with the purpose of supporting the development of the Colombian film industry by creating a film promotion mixed fund called Corporación PROIMAGENES en Movimiento (PROIMAGES in Motion Corporation). Starting in 2003, there has been growing cinematographic activity, thanks to the Cinema Law that allowed initiatives around cinematographic activity to be reborn in the country, through the creation of the Cinematographic Development Fund (FDC).
The history of Colombian cinema began in 1897 when the first Cinématographe arrived in the country, two years after the invention of cinematography by Auguste and Louis Lumière in Paris. The cinématographe was first demonstrated in the port city of Colón (in what is today Panama but was then part of Colombia), Barranquilla, Bucaramanga and later arrived to the capital city of Bogotá. In August of that same year the cinématographe was presented in the Municipal Theater (which was later demolished).
Soon after the introduction of the cinématographe in Colombia, the country entered a civil war known as the Thousand Days' War, causing the suspension of all film production. The first films usually portrayed nature and moments from everyday Colombian life. The majority of these films were led by the Di Domenico brothers who owned the Salón Olympia in Bogotá. The Di Domenico brothers also produced the first documentary film in Colombia called El drama del quince de Octubre (The Drama of October 15), which was intended to celebrate the centenary of the Battle of Boyacá, and also narrated the assassination of General Rafael Uribe Uribe, provoking controversy upon its release.
During the early years of Colombian cinema, producers almost exclusively portrayed nature and everyday life in their films until 1922, when the first narrative fiction film appeared, titled María (of which no complete copies remain). The film was directed by Máximo Calvo Olmedo, a Spanish immigrant who worked as a film distributor in Panama. He was hired to travel to the city of Cali, where he would direct and manage the film's photography. The film was based on Jorge Isaacs' novel María.
Another pioneer of Colombian cinema was Arturo Acevedo Vallarino, a producer and theater director from Antioquia who lived in Bogotá. After the introduction of foreign films and the fascination they caused in Colombia, theaters no longer were as profitable as they once were, so Acevedo decided to found a film production company called Acevedo e Hijos (Acevedo and Sons). Acevedo and Sons was the longest lasting production company in Colombia, and were in business from 1923 to 1946– the only one to survive the Great Depression of the 1930s. Acevedo and Sons produced the films La tragedia del silencio (The Tragedy of Silence) in 1924 and Bajo el Cielo Antioqueño (Under the Sky of Antioquia) in 1928. Under the Sky of Antioquia was financed by local tycoon Gonzalo Mejía. The film was criticized for being elitist, but received an unexpectedly positive reception from the moviegoing public. Films in Colombia continued to be largely based on themes of nature, folklore, and nationalism, with some exceptions in literary adaptations. In 1926 the film Garras de oro: The Dawn of Justice (Claws of Gold; the title is half Spanish and English) was released. It is distinctive for being based on a political issue, the separation of Panama from Colombia, and for criticizing the role of the United States in the conflict, both bold firsts in Colombian cinema.
In 1928 the Colombian company Cine Colombia purchased the Di Domenico film studios, which commercialized international films because of their promising profits. At the time, the Colombian public preferred international films to Colombian ones. As a result, from 1928 until 1940, only one feature-length sound film was produced in Colombia: Al son de las guitarras (To the Rhythm of the Guitars) by Alberto Santa, which was never shown in theaters. Colombians were more interested in Hollywood films. Colombian film industry enthusiasts did not have the money, technology or preparation needed to develop a national cinema. While Colombian movies were still silent, the international industry was already exploding with color and sound films, thus putting Colombian cinema at a considerable disadvantage.
In the 1940s a businessman from Bogotá named Oswaldo Duperly founded Ducrane Films, and produced numerous films, despite facing strong competition from Argentine and Mexican cinema, which after 1931 became the third most preferred choice of Colombians. The only production company that survived during this period was Acevedo and Sons, until it closed in 1945.
During the 1950s Gabriel García Márquez and Enrique Grau attempted to restart the industry. In 1954 the two artists, a writer and a painter respectively, created the surrealistic short film La langosta azul (The Blue Lobster). García Márquez continued in the industry as a scriptwriter while Grau continued painting.
Pornomiseria cinema was the term used by Colombian critics in the 1970s for certain films that exploited poverty and human misery, with the goals of making money and having their directors achieve international recognition. The term "pornomiseria" was coined by the Argentine director Luis Puenzo to criticize over-representation of marginalized lives in Latin American cinema. (See also Misery porn or Poverty porn for parallel phenomena.)
One of the most criticized examples was Gamín (1978) by Ciro Durán, a documentary about children living on the streets. The film went beyond simply depicting urban poverty by staging recreated scenes of, for example, children stealing car radios. Among the loudest critics were the filmmakers Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina, leaders of the Grupo de Cali. Among other films they made was the mockumentary The Vampires of Poverty (1977), a satire of pornomiseria cinema. The filmmaker Víctor Gaviria stood out for his social films that scandalized some sectors of public opinion for showing the reality of the lives of street children, as was the case with the award-winning film La vendedora de rosas (The Rose Seller, 1998).
On July 28, 1978, the Compañía de Fomento Cinematográfico (FOCINE) (Cinematic Development Company) was established to administer the Cinematic Development Fund, which had been created a year before, in 1977. FOCINE was first assigned to the Colombian Ministry of Communications, which in a period of ten years supported 29 films and a number of short films and documentaries. Corruption in the administration led to the closing of FOCINE in 1993. During this period, Carlos Mayolo's work transcended and introduced new forms of film-making in Colombian cinema, renewing the aesthetics and visual language of national cinema. Gustavo Nieto Roa helped to develop comedies influenced by Mexican cinema.
During the last decade of the 20th century, the Colombian government liquidated FOCINE, forcing film makers to co-produce films with other countries, mainly from Europe and private capital investors. Despite this, some important productions were developed, such as La estrategia del caracol (The Snail's Strategy) by Sergio Cabrera, which won numerous international prizes and managed to revive national interest in national films. Also, Jorge Alí Triana won many prizes and much recognition from Bolívar soy yo (I Am Bolívar, 2002).
In 2003, the Colombian government passed Law 814 of 2003, also known as the Cinema Law, which standardized help for local film production. The funds were collected through taxes from distributors, exhibitors and film producers. The goal was to support film producers, short films documentaries and public projects. Funds collected were administered by the PROIMAGENES Cinematographic Production Mixed Fund.
Numerous films were sponsored by the government and were successful at the local box office such as Soñar no Cuesta Nada (Dreaming Costs Nothing) by Rodrigo Triana, with 1,200,000 spectators, an unprecedented attendance at the time. Another was the film El colombian dream (the last word being in English to highlight a play on the concept of the "American Dream") by Felipe Aljure, which achieved technical innovations and employed a narrative never before seen in Colombian cinema. Some critics considered this period as the "renaissance of Colombian cinema" and as the best possibility in its entire history of having a well-established industry.
During the second term of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the government presented a tax reform to cut funding to the Law of Cinema. The president was criticized for this, but the minister of Culture, Elvira Cuervo de Jaramillo, lobbied in the Ministry of Finance to impede this law from affecting the financial resources destined to Colombian cinema. The Minister of Finance agreed to protect the benefits for the film industry.
Despite Colombian cinema having had a very small presence in international events, some documentaries during the 1970s had relative success, such as "Chircales" (1972) by Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva, which won international prizes and recognition.
During the 1990s Silva gained notoriety with the film La estrategia del caracol (The Strategy of the Snail, 1993) and Víctor Gaviria did so with his films Rodrigo D: No futuro (Rodrigo D: No future, 1990) and La vendedora de rosas (The Rose Seller,1998), which was nominated for a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the 2000s, actress Catalina Sandino Moreno was nominated for an Academy Award for her acting in the Colombian-American production Maria Full of Grace. Moreno was also nominated for best female acting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004 and won, sharing it with actress Charlize Theron.
Documentary productions in Colombia have varied in quality. Nevertheless, they haven't been widely distributed due to barriers that the film industry imposes regarding the exhibition and distribution of material. Viewers interested in focusing on these audiovisual materials are rare.
During the 1970s, in the city of Cali, there was a great boom, not only in film but in the arts in general. At that time the Grupo de Cali was formed, which would include Carlos Mayolo, Luis Ospina, Andrés Caicedo, Oscar Campo and other documentarists and directors who portrayed a particular sense of place and reality through their work. At the same time, documentarists like Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva produced a seemingly unending array of documentaries that discussed anthropology, portraying forms of life and realities unknown to many.
The development of animated film in Colombia, as in the rest of Latin America, has been slow and irregular, and it is only in recent years that animation has begun to gain importance. The first initiatives in the country were around the 1970s, especially in television commercial production. Nonetheless, it was at the end of the past decade that Fernando Laverde, considered the pioneer of stop motion animation in Colombia, and used experimental methods and limited resources to create short animated pieces that received national and international recognition. Bogota native Carlos Santa explored the world of animated film as fine arts and is considered the father of experimental animation in Colombia. In 1988 with the support of FOCINE, Santa released his film El pasajero de la noche (The Passenger of the Night) and in 1994 La selva oscura (The Dark Jungle) at the Caracas Film Festival. Both films received critical recognition for their artistic and narrative merits. In 2010, Carlos Santa completed his first feature-length animated film Los Extraños Presagios de León Prozak (The Mysterious Presages of León Prozak) which premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. In the 2000s there was renewed activity in Colombian animation, thanks to the interest of a new generation in the genre and the emergence of new technology. In 2003 the animated full-length film Bolivar the Hero was released, and the LOOP Animation and Video Games Festival was born, where Colombian and Latin American animators' work was encouraged and rewarded.
Many film festivals take place in Colombia, but arguably the two most important are the Cartagena Film Festival, functioning every year since 1960, and the Bogotá Film Festival, functioning every year since 1984, both presenting Latin American and Spanish movies.
Asides from both international festivals, there are year-round meetings, expositions and festivals that gather audiences and award local film makers. The most notable are as follows:
In Colombia there are five major commercial movie theatre chains: Cine Colombia, Cinemark, Cinépolis, Procinal and Royal Films. There are also many independent movie theaters, such as the Cinemateca Distrital de Bogotá and Los Acevedos in the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá.