As a cultural and aesthetic object, fi lms manage to estabIish - like no other artistic expression- deep relations with the contexts and social dynamics where they a re made. This paper aims at exploring, though briefty, the way in which the cinema in Colombia has contributed to the construction of Modernity; it also seeks to provide a closer look at the relations that can be establ ished with the socially-built cultural imagi nary. With these two purposes in mind, the first part of rhe paper is devoted to making a brief defin ition of modernity and showing how this trend has evolved in Colombia, while the second part intends to describe how film-making was incorporated into rhe modernization process during a particular period of time, from 1900 to 1960.