page_title: Cinema of Venezuela
section_title: Early years (1890s–1930s)
hierarchical_section_title: Cinema of Venezuela / History / Early years (1890s–1930s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Baralt Theatre 1896
context_page_description: The cinema of Venezuela is the production and industry of filmmaking in Venezuela. Venezuelan cinema has been characterised from its outset as propaganda, partially state-controlled and state-funded, commercial cinema. The nation has seen a variety of successful films, however, which have reaped several international awards. Still, in terms of quality, it is said that though "we can point to specific people who have made great films in Venezuela [and] a couple of great moments in the history of Venezuelan cinema, [...] those have been exceptions". In the 21st century, Venezuelan cinema has seen more independence from the government, but has still been described as recently as 2017 to be at least "influenced" by the state.
  Film was introduced to the country in 1896, with the first national films screened in 1897. Several films were made in the last few years of the 19th Century, with a lower rate of production until the 1970s.
  The industry in the country has served political purposes from its early years and Juan Vicente Gómez' governments all the way through to current President Nicolás Maduro, and is also a mass-market entertainment base; sometimes the aims overlap.
context_section_description: It is said by film writers that during this time, filmmaking was limited to "a few pioneering filmmakers [...] who survived by selling propaganda-style documentaries and newsreels to the [Juan Vicente Gómez dictatorship]". It is also suggested that Venezuelans as a society were more film consumers than producers in this time, and that artistic films were only produced in the wider context of photography or physical art.
  The first films shown in Venezuela were released on July 11, 1896 at the Baralt Theatre in Maracaibo. This was, however, not fully known until almost a century later in 1983; cinema scholarship in Venezuela was only developed during its "Golden Age" in the late 1970s, until which point the "official history [...] was limited to amusing stories told by those who were present during the early years."
  The early exhibition was facilitated by entrepreneur Luis Manuel Méndez, who had travelled to New York City in June 1896 and acquired a Vitascope, as well as licenses to use it for profit in both Venezuela and Colombia. This made Venezuela the second country in Latin America (after Brazil) to receive film screening technology, and the first to use Vitascope. The films shown included The Monroe Doctrine and Umbrella Dance. Six months later in January 1897 the first films to be produced in Venezuela were shown at the same cinema; these were Un célebre especialista sacando muelas en el gran Hotel Europa and Muchachos bañándose en la laguna de Maracaibo. The reception to the introduction of cinema was seemingly "cold" and "indifferent".
  Both these first Venezuelan films, and the credit for bringing Vitascope to Venezuela, have historically been attributed to Manuel Trujillo Durán. Parts of Venezuelan film scholarship have had the tendency to paint Trujillo as the most important film pioneer of the nation; others show that he was simply a photographer who had the ability to operate the Vitascope.
  On July 15, 1897 the Cinemagraph was first exhibited in Venezuela, by an employee sent by the Lumière Company, in Caracas. After two months, the Frenchman was run out of the country, but may have helped film this year's Venezuelan film productions, Una paliza en el estado Sarría and Carlos Ruiz peleando con un cochero, shown on November 26. After these, there is little evidence of film production for the next 10 years, though multiple different brands of film cameras and projectors were in the country. In total, there appears to have been 51 films, 37 short films and 14 features, made in Venezuela between 1897 and 1936. All were silent films. The first feature, La dama de las Cayenas, was released in 1913 with a runtime of 60 minutes.
  Narrative films, rather than cinema as novelty, began to be produced in Venezuela in the 1910s, with its pioneers Enrique Zimmerman, director of La Dama de las Cayenas, and Lucas Manzano, who co-created what is considered Venezuela's first narrative film, Don Confusio. It wasn't long after their respective debuts that they began collaboration, with Manzano coming to produce La Dama de las Cayenas. As Manzano's short films had been light comedies, La Dama... was instead a parody film, targeting the Alexandre Dumas story The Lady of the Camellias, that told a torrid love story. Manzano recounted that it was so successful that it persuaded Zimmerman and himself to choose to become filmmakers, "peliculeros".
  This was not the only film inspired by literature: Jacobo Capriles and Edgar J. Anzola made La Trepadora, based on a Rómulo Gallegos book as many Latin American films of the century would be, as part of their new production company Triunfo Films, which they had founded in 1923. Soon, film education started in the country, and photographer Amábilis Cordero took correspondence classes to make his first film, Los milagros de la Divina Pastora in 1928; though he could have been the first notable director to have been trained, he still openly thought of himself as a "rookie". The second production company, Cinematograficos Lara, was founded by Cordero from his profits.
  Despite these companies exist
caption: Teatro Baralt in 1896, where the first Venezuelan films were screened
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