143 SLAC 15 (2) pp. 143–161 Intellect Limited 2018 Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas Volume 15 Number 2 © 2018 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/slac.15.2.143_1 MARíA LOURDES CORTéS University of Costa Rica Filmmaking in Central America: An overview ABSTRACT Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Central American audio-visual produc- tion has increased in an unprecedented manner. In the 1990s, the entire region only produced and exhibited one feature-length film, El silencio de Neto/Neto’s Silence (Argueta, 1994), yet in the last seventeen years more than two hundred fiction films have been made and shown in Central America. It is only in the last few years, however, that some of these films have attracted international interest in the form of funding and distribution or have created their own structures for these. This article therefore seeks to answer the question of how and why Central American film indus- tries have been revived since 2000, considering the differing approaches to produc- tion and distribution employed by regional organizations, national governments and individual directors. WHEN FILMMAKING IS A TRADE FOR THE ‘INSANE’ In the twentieth century, Central American filmmaking – especially feature- length films – was a sporadic and precarious endeavour. Very few filmmakers were able to complete their films and, when they did so it was usually at a huge financial and personal cost. For example, in order to make his first film, Eulalia (1987, Costa Rica), Oscar Castillo was forced to take out a mortgage on his house. Three years previously, Castillo had been the executive producer for the hitherto most ambitious movie ever made in Central America, La Segua/The Segua (1984, Costa Rica), by Antonio Yglesias which cost $400,000 KEYWORDS Central American cinema small national cinema film festivals film funding film distribution film industries