[5] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The film went beyond simply depicting urban poverty by staging recreated scenes of, for example, children stealing car radios.

[7] 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.

[19] 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,[20] 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.

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.

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.