Essayists and academics have explored at length the historical beginnings of moviemaking in Latin America. Narratives about those beginnings study how national cinemas developed simultaneously with industrialization, modernization, changes in urban life, European immigration, and the consolidation of national states in the region's republics at the turn of the twentieth century. These histories furthermore seek the technological aspects and aesthetics that consolidated to spur the transition from silent film to sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The difficult battle against the hegemonic Hollywood system and the films it produced was a persistent element in this process, an element that the historiography has especially explored.
The transition from silent film to sound shaped each of these national film industries decisively, influencing the emergence of the studio system years after. The resultant boom in film production became part of a public repertoire of nationalistic pride, eulogized by press and government...
