In the first and only issue of the magazine Caligari: cine y fotografía [Caligari: Cinema and Photography], the Colombian filmmaker Carlos Mayolo Velasco published an article on the role of the Colombian provinces in the development of a local aesthetic. Mayolo claims that being from the province of Cali means approaching Colombian values from the farthest corners of an unknown culture. Mayolo states the proviso that “our motivation has nothing to do with pornographic incentives to portray remote areas as something exotic that can be easily sold overseas.” As explained in the article, Mayolo was referring to a group of filmmakers who went to Cali to shoot a bunch of movies in the Valle del Cauca region. In his opinion, the group’s aesthetic intentions “get us out of Bogotá in search of our stories, our memories, our nostalgia, our legends, and even socio-anthropological research.” Although the filmmakers admit that shooting in the provinces (in this case Cali) is more difficult because they are so far from the capital city, the local stories they find allow them to portray an aesthetic that is neither chauvinistic nor folklorist, but that can “transform a supposed provincialism into something universal, just as La Mancha, Macondo, and Comala are now universal.”

The article “Universo de provincia o provincia universal” [Provincial Universe or Universal Province] (1982) addressed a fundamental problem facing Colombian art at the time, which concerned the relationship between the provinces and the capital city, Bogotá. This article is therefore of great interest because it speaks to the issue from the perspective of a movie director who discusses both the challenges and the potential of the provinces in terms of Colombian cinematography. In this case, Carlos Mayolo (1945–2007) is referring to Cali and the nearby region of Valle del Cauca that were used as locations for Colombian movies and inspired the name Caliwood—a spoof on the name Hollywood.  

In 1982, when Mayolo wrote this article, the group of filmmakers produced movies such as La virgen y el fotógrafo [The Virgin and the Photographer] by Luis Alfredo Sánchez; El Escarabajo [The Beetle] by Lisandro Duque (b. 1943); and Pura sangre [Pure Blood] by Luis Ospina (b. 1949). They later produced Carne de tu carne [Flesh of Your Flesh] (1983) by Mayolo; A la salida nos vemos [See You Outside] (1985) by Carlos Palau; and El día que me quieras [The Day That You Love Me] (1985) by Sergio Dow. When the Colombian government created the FOCINE Movie Promotion Company in 1978, it stimulated the production of movies by offering credits to production companies. The visual artist Karen Lamassonne (b. 1954) and the art critic Miguel González (b. 1950) were involved in the artistic direction of some of the movies produced in Cali.

Caligari magazine was the final attempt by the designer and photographer Hernando Guerrero (b. 1948) to revive Ciudad Solar [see “Estatutos de Ciudad Solar” [Statutes of Ciudad Solar], doc. no. 858536]. In 1982, Guerrero once again wrote the statutes together with the writer and theater director Sandro Romero Rey (b. 1959), who was head of the magazine’s editorial department. One of the stumbling blocks that stymied the project was that Guerrero’s family would not permit filming in the house that had been the original headquarters of Ciudad Solar (1971–73).

Mayolo’s movies are an important contribution to the history of Colombian film. During the 1970s, he and Luis Ospina coproduced three documentaries; two of them were about the city of Cali: Oiga Vea! Oiga Vea! [Hear See! Hear See!] (1971)and Cali de película [Cali Like a Movie] (1972). The third, Agarrando pueblo [Grabbing the Public] (1977), criticized the way that some documentary producers transformed poverty into a commercial product. Agarrando pueblo was awarded the Interfilm Prize at the Oberhausen International Film Festival (1979) where Mayolo described it as a critique of “porno-poverty.”