Cinema of Latin America
Latin American cinema flourished after the introduction of sound, which added a linguistic barrier to the export of Hollywood film south of the border.
[1] Famous actors and actresses from this period include María Félix, Pedro Infante, Dolores del Río, Jorge Negrete and comedian Cantinflas.
[3][4] During the first three decades of the 20th century, more than 200 silent feature films were produced in the country, in addition to a large number of documentaries, newsreels and shorter fictional works.
[6] Despite these limitations, the silent era saw the professional formation of several filmmakers who laid many of the foundations for the industrial sound films of the 1930s, and some of them, such as José A. Ferreyra and Leopoldo Torres Ríos, were fundamental for that period as well.
In Brazil, the Cinema Novo movement created a particular way of making movies with critical and intellectual screenplays, a clearer photography related to the light of the outdoors in a tropical landscape, and a political message.
Director Glauber Rocha was the key figure of the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, famous for his trilogy of political films: Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, Terra em Transe (1967) and O Dragão da Maldade Contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969), for which he won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
In Colombia, Carlos Mayolo, Luis Ospina and Andrés Caicedo led an alternative movement that was to have lasting influence, founding the Grupo de Cali, which they called Caliwood and producing some films as leading exponents of the "New Latin American Cinema" of the 1960s and 1970s, including Oiga, Vea, The Vampires of Poverty (Ospina) and Carne de tu carne (Mayolo) were produced in the 1980s and belong to a different aesthetics.
In Mexico movies such as Como agua para chocolate (1992), Cronos (1993), Amores perros (2000), Y tu mamá también (2001), Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Babel (2006) have been successful in creating universal stories about contemporary subjects, and were internationally recognised, as in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
The modern Brazilian film industry has become more profitable inside the country, and some of its productions have received prizes and recognition in Europe and the United States.
Movies like Central Station (1998), City of God (2002) and Elite Squad (2007) have fans around the world, and its directors Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles and José Padilha, have taken part in American and European film projects.
According to PWC's Global Media Outlook 2019-2023 report, production levels for major film industries in Latin America is seeing an upward trend ever since 2014.
