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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Film Studies: National Cinemas
  5. Colombia

Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.
  • Introduction
  • Streaming services
  • Afghanistan
  • Africa (General)
    • Africa, Northern
    • Africa, French speaking
    • Africa, Sub-Saharan
  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Benelux
  • Brazil
  • Cambodia
  • Canada
    • Quebec
  • Caribbean area
  • Chile
  • Chinese cinema
  • Colombia
  • Cuba
  • Czechia (Czech Republic)
  • France
  • Germany
  • Great Britain
    • Northern Ireland
    • Scotland
    • Wales
  • Greece
  • Hong Kong cinema
  • Hungary
  • India
  • Indigenous films
  • Irish cinema
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Latin America
  • Mexico
  • Middle East
    • Egypt
    • Iran
    • Israel
    • Turkey
  • New Zealand
  • Nigeria
  • Nordic cinema
    • Denmark
    • Finland
    • Iceland
    • Norway
    • Sweden
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
    • Films by Director
    • Documentaries
    • Films by Title
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Russia & the Soviet Union
  • Slovakia
  • South Africa
  • South America
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • United States
    • Puerto Rico
  • Vietnam
  • Yugoslavia & Former Yugoslav Republics
  • Transnational & diasporic cinema
  • Journals & magazines about film

Subject Librarian

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Lucinda M. Hall
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Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
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Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
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Subjects: Film and Media Studies, Geography, Polar Studies

Introduction to Colombian cinema

Local filmmaking began in 1905 but despite the country’s large cinemagoing public, until recently there has not been a substantial local feature film industry because Colombian cinema screens have been dominated by foreign films, mostly from Mexico and the US: between 1930 and 1950, for example, only about ten Colombian features were made. Since 1960, Colombia has hosted the Cartagena International Film Festival, and during the 1960s a group of filmmakers who had trained abroad—at IDHEC in France and at the Centro Sperimentale in Italy—returned to Colombia (see film school). A body of documentary work followed, ranging from the ethnographic cinéma vérité-inspired works Chircales/Brickmakers (1972) and Campesinos/Peasants (1975) by Colombia’s leading documentary makers, Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Silva, to radical interventions such as Carlos Alvares’s Qué es la democracia?/What is Democracy? (1971). In 1971, a ‘surcharge law’ decreed that Colombian-made films be exhibited at first-run cinemas, and a quota system was put in place with the aim of encouraging production and distribution of Colombian films. In 1978 FOCINE, the National Film Development Agency, was established as part of the Ministry of Communications to support both feature also documentary filmmaking: it proved the most successful operation of its kind in Latin America outside Cuba’s ICAIC, and under its auspices Colombia saw an increase in local film production: an important film of this period was the popular Gamín/Waif, Ciro Durán’s 1981 feature-length documentary about the street children of Bogotá. One of the noteworthy aspects of cinema culture in Colombia is the relatively high level of female participation in documentary making: for example, aside from Marta Rodriguez’s seminal contributions, the all-female collective Cine Mujer produced a number of documentaries during the 1980s that have been referenced in studies of feminist cinema.

FOCINE closed in 1992, and there was little further state support for local filmmaking until the Film Law of 2003 (revised 2013) reactivated film production, increased international collaborations, and greatly increased the visibility of Colombian cinema in the transnational sphere; with successes including El abrazo de la serpiente/Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, Colombia/Venezuela/Argentia, 2015), the first Colombian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; and La tierra y la sombra/Land and Shade (Cesar Acevedo, Colombia/France/Netherlands/Chile/Brazil, 2015), which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes. In recent years annual features output has risen to the extent that it is claimed the country will soon overtake Argentina as the third-largest film market in Latin America.

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Colombia, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 Apr. 2024

In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog

You can start your search here with these subject heading(s) below:

  • motion pictures colombia
  • motion pictures colombia history
  • motion picture producers and directors colombia
  • motion picture industry colombia

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover artCine colombiano: estética, modernidad y cultura by Guillermo Pérez La Rotta.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C6 P47 2013
    ISBN: 9789587321241
  • Cover artCinembargo Colombia: ensayos críticos sobre cine y cultura by Juana Suárez.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C6 S83 2009
    ISBN: 9789586707640
    Cinembargo Colombia ofrece una mirada inédita sobre la producción cinematográfica colombiana. Sin desprenderse de la narrativa fílmica de las obras que analiza, Juana Suárez nos conduce por entre la densidad cultural de esta producción y su inseparable relación con la historia social y política del país, con un punto de vista siempre esclarecedor.
  • Cover ArtNarrativas e imágenes cinematográficas: inmigrantes colombianos y extranjeros en Colombia (1999-2009) by Manuel Silva Rodríguez
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9789585345874
    Ya que el cine de ficción nos posibilita rastrear discursos y construcciones simbólicas, nos permite reconocer narrativas e imágenes asociadas a la figuración de unos rasgos comunes, constantes o diversos de un posible “nosotros”. Esta vez, en unos contextos representados por las migraciones, por las relaciones de personajes colombianos con extranjeros. ...

Selected book title(s)

  • Cover ArtCommodifying violence in literature and on screen by Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola
    • Open Access Icon
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781003195702
    This book traverses the cultural landscape of Colombia through in-depth analyses of displacement, local and global cultures, human rights abuses, and literary and media production. Through an exploration of the cultural processes that perpetuate the "darker side" of Latin America for global consumption, it investigates the "condition" that has led writers, filmmakers, and artists to embrace (purposefully or not) the incessant violence in Colombian society as the object of their own creative endeavors. ...
  • Cover artEl rompecabezas de la memoria: literatura, cine y testimonio de comienzos de siglo en Colombia by María Ospina Pizano
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PQ 8162 .O68 2019
    ISBN: 9788491920687
    Este volumen examina el rol central que desempeñan los artefactos y prácticas culturales de comienzos de siglo XXI en Colombia en el contexto de los debates públicos sobre los legados de las violencias y en las prácticas de construcción de la memoria. Investiga la relación entre violencia y lenguaje, las dimensiones genérico-sexuales de las dinámicas violentas, y propone reflexiones críticas sobre la ética del testimonio, cuestionando y complicando los discursos oficiales de postconflicto que circulan con gran fuerza hoy en Colombia.
  • Cover ArtMujer, diversidad y cine en Colombia: perspectivas de género e imágenes de la mujer del siglo XXI by Karol Valderrama Burgos
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9789585001817
    La representación de la mujer en el cine de Colombia ha tendido a estar asociada a nociones de sumisión, victimización o sexualización, sugiriendo una cierta uniformidad, invisibilidad y repetición acerca de su existencia social y cinematográfica. A pesar de esta complejidad cultural e histórica, existe una serie de producciones colombianas hechas en el nuevo milenio que trascienden los sesgos de género patriarcales y las dicotomías morales sobre la mujer en la pantalla grande. ...

Other library resource(s)

  • Resource logoLatin American cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez
    • On Campus or VPN
    ISBN: 9780199791286
    How might the term “Latin American Cinema” be defined? The term is not exempt from controversy any more than the concept of Latin America itself, which was first imagined by the French Michel Chevalier in the mid-19th century and later coined by the Colombian José María Torres Caicedo. The question of whether a cinema that is specifically Latin American exists and, furthermore, whether it is productive to conduct research from this broad perspective often appears in prologues to Latin American film studies. ...

Finding scholarly articles and journal title(s)

You can find scholarly literature for film and television studies in a variety of journals. However, if you want to do targeted searching, you can use a subject specific database such as Film & Television Literature Index. You can also use the search box at the top of the page.

  • Resource logoFilm & television literature index
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    This index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.
  • Resource logoHAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) online by UCLA
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    HAPI is a source for worldwide information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States, with coverage from 1970 to the present.
  • Resource logoScreen studies collection by ProQuest
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    A comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
  • Resource logoWeb of science citation databases by Clarivate
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.

Selected movie title(s)

Find more Colombian films in the Library's online catalog.

  • Colección cine silente colombiano by Various directors
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #12075
    A collection of silent films, chiefly melodramas, made in Colombia. Included are also documentary footage, and modern documentaries on some of the films and filmmakers. The short film En busca de María (1985) is a fictionalized account of the making of a lost silent film.
  • El embajador de la India = the ambassador of India by Mario Ribero Ferreira.
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #12029
    A provincial man is mistaken for the ambassador from India when he arrives in a Colombian city where they have been making preparations for the arrival of the dignitary. Soon he finds himself in too deep and must assume his new identity.
  • Cover artLos niños invisibles by Lisandro Duque Naranjo
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #12032
    In a small town in Colombia in the 1950s three eight-year-olds attempt to make themselves invisible by following the directions in a book of black magic. Fifty years later one of these children tells the story of their adventures.
  • Cover artPura sangre by Luis Ospina
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #12256
    This first film by Colombian producer/director Luis Ospina is an obvious metaphor that relates vampirism to the social oppression of the poor by the ruling classes. Here a powerful Colombian industrialist must survive through the blood of young boys, blood that comes from victims selected from a different class than the proletariat.
  • Cover artTe busco by Ricardo Coral Dorado
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #12247
    A precocious five-year-old Colombian boy, William, becomes an accomplice in his Uncle Gustavo's intricate plan to seduce the town's beautiful singer.

Internet resource(s)

  • Colombian Film Festival of New York
    • Link
    The Colombian film festival of New York was founded by Juan Carvajal in 2012, a filmmaker from Cali, Colombia, otherwise known as CALIWOOD for its history and talent in filmmaking. ...
    more...less...
    For many years, the film industry in Colombia has often lacked the resources to produce national cinema. Among several setbacks, the absence of a national audience who demanded Hollywood films was particularly challenging. In recent years, Colombia has expanded its resources to support filmmakers throughout the country. Since then, the number of productions has increased dramatically. ...

Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Film Studies? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.

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  • Last Updated: Jun 5, 2025 11:55 AM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/nationalcinemas
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