Fourteen fiction feature films were produced in Colombia between 1922 and 1928. Of these, only two exist in (almost) complete form, six are considered lost, and six survive incomplete. The remaining fragments of Aura o las Violetas, and the famous novel on which it was based, are enough to reconstruct the film’s melodramatic plot. After a few years away, a student returns home to discover that his childhood love, Aura, has become engaged to a rich man in an attempt to rescue her family from poverty. Deeply shocked, he tries to stop the marriage but arrives too late. He writes to Aura, but she refuses to pursue their forbidden love. A key scene set in a theatre was shot in the Gran Salón Olympia in Bogotá, where the film later premiered. This was the first movie theatre built in Colombia by brothers Francesco and Vincenzo Di Domenico. The Italian-born film producers and distributors, who made Aura o las Violetas and four other films, are considered pioneering figures in Colombian film history.

Lorena Bordigoni