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.

Since the mid-2000s and developing in the 2010s, the more successful national films have been LGBT-related as part of the broader wave of Latin American New Maricón Cinema, with several of the country's Oscar submissions being based in LGBT+ narratives.

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.

"[8] 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.

[11] Despite these companies existing, Arturo Serrano states that Venezuela "did not have a single professional filmmaker" and was lagging behind the rest of the world "in terms of quality and the use of cinematographic language".

[12] Taboga features both speech and live music, and scholars also claim it as the first Venezuelan film with a "director to understand the artistic possibilities of cinema as a medium of visual expression".

[26][27] (in Spanish) Then, that same year, with the Viernes Negro, oil prices depreciated and Venezuela entered a depression which prevented such extravagant funding, film production continued; more transnational productions occurred, many more with Spain due to Latin America experiencing poor economic fortune in general,[24] and there was some success in new cinema, as well: Fina Torres' 1985 Oriana won the Caméra d'Or Prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival as the best first feature.

[29] Venezuelan capital Caracas hosted the Ibero-American Forum on Cinematography Integration in 1989, from which the pan-continental IBERMEDIA was formed; a union which provides regional funding.

[24] After the political unrest at the start of the 1990s, film production had very little income despite staying relatively strong through Viernes Negro; FONCINE was issued a bailout in 1991 to restart the industry on a smaller scale.

The lack of depth in favor of presenting ultra-violence is said to compromise the narrative of the film,[35][36][37][38] with said violence also unpalatable to some,[38] and questionable moral undertones of poverty justifying the actions.

The sum of the pilgrimage to the top of the Sorte mountain and the personal visions and particular worlds of believers show us an eclectic and permeable Maria Lionza that has endured over time.

The 2013 horror film La Casa del Fin de los Tiempos became such a success that its director was hired in 2016 to shoot an American remake.

[46] Examples of these like Pelo malo (2013), Azul y no tan rosa (2012), and Desde Allá (2015) are among the nation's most well-known and most successful films, winning multiple international awards.

The article then discusses how Venezuela was, in 2017, at a critical tipping point, facing the simultaneous increase in independent Venezuelan filmmaking and mass emigration of directors and cinematographers.

[49] In July 2017, the Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía, previously autonomous if supported by the government, was appointed a new chair in the Deputy Culture Minister Aracelis García.

The 2014 short documentary "From the Brink: Venezuela Rising" is an American production by VICE, where animation is used to fill in where there is either no live footage or the real images are too sensitive, the film covering an outsider experiencing the 2014 Venezuelan protests;[57] a 2019 viral Storybooth video also uses animation to tell the story of protests in Venezuela, here so used because it was produced in the United States, featuring the Venezuelan emigrant whose story to asylum is being told.

[61]:113-122 Films on the subject receive mixed responses from the Bolivarian government; positive portrayals will be re-run on television and in cinema for decades after release, while those suggesting negatives to the revolution have been banned in the country.

[63] An Associated Press report wrote in 2015 that the new wave follows the Cuban gay cinema of the 1990s, as well as noting the irony of several of these films receiving state funding, based on the Cinematography Law.

[64] Comparatively, a Venezuelan LGBT+ rights lawyer José Manuel Simons assures that the people of Venezuela, as reflected by the topic appearing so much in film, are accepting and ready to move towards LGBT+ equality, saying that the government is resisting and needs to catch up.

[67] Famous examples include Mariana Rondón's Pelo malo (2013); ostensibly a coming-of-age story, but which even explicitly runs deeper into inherent problems with Venezuelan society.

[47] Pelo malo and Desde Allá both discuss other issues common in Venezuela, namely racism and prostitution; Azul y no tan rosa instead is one of few recent Venezuelan films to be set in a middle-class environment, showing that discrimination and social tensions are still present here.

[69] González Vargas critiques some of the higher-profile Venezuelan films, saying that Azul y no tan rosa still feels foreign because of how easy being openly gay is for the main character at a time when it was still dangerous to be out in the country, comparing it to the injustices in Pelo malo that made it resonate with him.

[28]:34 There are films created in the 1910s and 20s by Prudencia Grifell, a Spanish-born actress who formed a production company called Nostra, serving many roles in front of and behind the camera,[28]:42, 49.

[28]:35 Also coming to prominence in the 1970s was Solveig Hoogesteijn, a Swedish immigrant who created films with a lot of national sentiment, including typical coastal settings and featuring magical realism.

[28]:36 All three were founders of Grupo Miércoles, along with Carmen Luisa Cisneros, Ambretta Marrosu, Vincenzina Marotta, and Giovanna Merola; the group's first major work was an audiovisual presentation, Las alfareras de lomas bajas, in 1980.

[28]:36 Torres, Vera, and Hoogesteijin each produced notable works in the 1980s,[28]:37-38 with the newer Haydee Ascanio creating another women's film in 1987, Unas son de amor, looking at controversial abortion issues.

In 1989, María Eugenia Martínez created the animated film Febrero, deemed an accurate representation of the Caracazo; in the same year, Haydee Pino made La ventana and Diálogo, looking at female and transvestite sexuality.

[28]:40 Despite the downturn, female filmmakers continued to make political short films in the 1990s, with more focus on riots and el Caracazo, like Blaser's Venezuela, 27 de febrero and La otra mirada.

[73] The box office gross took leaps in 2013, though this may be attributed to the changes in currency value over only a few years affecting the numbers where it wouldn't in countries with a more stable economy: the 2008 average ticket price was 10 bolívares, and in 2013 it was 47.

[4] The Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía (English: Autonomous National Centre for Filmmaking; CNAC) is the governing body of film public policy in Venezuela.