Cinema of Venezuela

Cinema of Venezuela
National Cinema at Museo Bellas Artes
No. of screens	481 (2013)[1]
• Per capita	1.8 per 100,000 (2013)[1]
Main distributors	Cinematográfica Blancica The Walt Disney Company Venezuela Cines Unidos[2](2011) Cinex
Produced feature films (2013)[3]
Total	21
Fictional	18
Animated	-
Documentary	3
Number of admissions (2013)[4]
Total	30,069,381
National films	2,429,560 (8.1%)
Gross box office (2013)[4]
Total	VEF 1.42 billion
National films	VEF 104 million (7.3%)

Cinema of Venezuela
List of Venezuelan films
1890s
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pre-1940
1940s
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v t e

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.^[5] The nation has seen a variety of successful films, 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".^[6] 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.^[7]

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. In the 21st century, attendance grew to a national average that would indicate every citizen visits the cinema once a year, though screenings began to decrease with the ongoing crisis after 2010.

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.