My pompous-sounding investiga­tions into 'the state of contemporary art in Bolivia' started inauspiciously. I thought, well, the first thing I'll have to do is to look at some art. Maybe it's just a case of pathetic fallacy, but the local weather seems to have it in for me every time I try and visit an art gallery in La Paz, as it starts to rain torrentially. Wandering up and down Ave. Ecuador under darkening skies I found the Centra Arte у Culturas Bolivi­anos shut for maintenance, and the Atipana gallery closed while awaiting a new exhibition. So then I headed to the Zona Sur where Galena Arte 21 and Galena Alternativa in San Miguel proved to be little more than glori­fied craft shops selling cheap, badly-hung paintings of nice, saleable, dull subjects alongside table ornaments and other crafts. Then it started to rain again, so I left off visiting Galena Nota for another day.

In the meantime I went back to Ati­pana for the opening of an exhibition by a young artist from El Alto, met and interviewed a group of young artists from the La Paz scene, had a read of Bolivia's 'Otro Arte' magazine, chatted to various people about 'contemporary art in Bolivia', and briefly attended an artists' workshop. All of which, thankfully, proved a lit­tle more fruitful than wandering the streets in the rain.

At Atipana, 25 year-old Salomon Paco had occupied the gallery's two small spaces with a mix of abstract can­vases and detailed paintings whose figures, held bound in an elephant's trunk or shrinking from nightmare ap­paritions, suggested a threatening exoticism and ghoulishness. Like so much of the work by young artists that I did eventually track down, these scenes took identity as a pivotal theme. This comes as no surprise given the newness of the 'Escuela Municipal de las Artes' which Paco attends in El Alto, a booming city notorious for its predominantly migrant demographic makeup - in limbo between the rural and the urban, the indigenous and the markedly western, the pre- and post-industrial.

Anuar Elias' winning entry for the Arte Joven prize in 2010 is a piece of video art entitled 'Occiriente' that features poetry of his wife's which includes the refrain 'Bolivia no existe'. However, this questioning of identity comes from from a very different perspective (both in terms of class and opportunity, but also given that Elias is in fact Mexican). It is far removed from the focus around 'indigenous' identity that is presumed to occupy the aforementioned artists from El Alto. However Salomon Paco's work contains none of the more typi­cal motifs of 'indigenous art' that you might, for example, find in the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Plaza on El Prado. Indeed, it seems that in fact it was necessary for Salomon to come into into La Paz to display his work since, as he told me, there is no audi­ence for abstract art in El Alto

Salomon's mentor Adamo Morellicon talked to me enthusiastically about the Escuela de las Artes in El Alto, but his assurance that the introduc­tion of guest artists from conceptual backgrounds was done 'without compromising identity' hints at some of the tensions that exist in this changing environment. For Morellicon, though, this combination of more 'modern' artistic approaches with the more 'spiritual' creative process which his Alteno students bring to their work makes for exciting and original new forms that reflect the current 'proceso de cambio' in Bolivia.

For Anuar Elias and several of his peers with whom I spoke, this idea of an indig­enous identity is an invention on the part of the govern­ment, a kind of 'indigenismo' that they are trying to force through the mediums of culture. This, of course, is debatable since this aes­thetic vision and ideology have existed long before the MAS. Nonetheless, at present aesthetics and politics can appear quite closely tied.The resulting confusion as to how to support and develop artistic practice makes it a difficult task for the Ministry of Culture to choose which activities to promote.

Despite the government's rapid inauguration of the El Alto art school, neither it nor the much older Fine Arts Academy are actually entitled to endow degrees. It seems this privilege is reserved for UMSA, which according to everyone I spoke to is an institution very much set in its ways. One student assured me that studies of modern art end with Edward Munch, and several were disparaging of the fact that there is no education in concep­tual thought, nor in mediums beyond painting, sculpture and a little pho­tography. And it seems that the same goes in both the Academy and in the El Alto school; Salomon Paco told me his greatest influence was the painter Francis Bacon, but he had discovered the artist for himself, not though his formal education.

Andres Pereira is a former student of both the Academy and UMSA. When I did finally make it to Galena Nota, the only established contemporary art gallery here in La Paz, one of the artists that caught my eye there was Ramiro Garavito, a member of the previous generation. Andres told me: ""I entered the Fine Art Academy in the post-Garavito era. He had an interesting curriculum, which they changed. So I started drawing with (Benedicto) Aiza, who taught that kitsch was the worst thing in the world, and would use SIART [the La Paz biennale which functions as an important platform for contemporary art here] as an example. And of course every­body- as they have no critical point of view- would agree. It was a kind of brainwash. But I was lucky, I found Roberto Valcarcel, a very important educator. He's a conceptual artist. He would make pobera (detritus art), he's a performer etc, who would give workshops here. I had the chance of being able to afford these workshops. And through him I was able to see other ways, other routes.""

Galo Coca, a mixed media and performance artist in La Paz, concurs with this assessment of students' (lack of) critical faculties: ""I believe there is a big problem because the guys are taught in a technical way, and they don't develop a critical spirit that would let them assess the history, or produce new proposals. So people who come out of there are con­demned to failure as artists.""

So that does that mean that only those 'able to afford' will be able to develop what we would consider a well-rounded artistic education? Art historian Lucia Escobari's comment that many young creatives choose to take private classes with established artists here seems to suggest so. And there is no doubt that the social demographic of El Alto means that such costs are extremely prohibitive for young artists there. Salomon Paco makes detritus art too, but he told me that the motivation for doing this was partly eco­nomic, since he couldn't afford to buy materials.

Money and art are inter­twined in all kinds of ways of course; the artists I spoke to all discussed the lack of an art market in Bolivia, and the fact that those with money tend to be 'senoras у senores' who don't have much of an interest in young, contem­porary art.

Interestingly though, and despite his concerns about 'these filters and circuits in which art projects and artist's CVs move, and the people who select them', Anuar Elias (who deliberately wrote a CV devoid of all but the barest details as a response) feels that the lack of a more developed art market and scene can perhaps allow for a freer kind of expression: ""There are risks because you don't have recourse to other artists' feedback, and that can be prejudicial for the artwork. But Bolivia as a workshop of produc­tion, isolated from market tendencies, is an interesting place to be able to develop a much more pure work of art, free of contamination.""

Browsing the countless pirate DVD shops, stalls and recycled tarpaulin mats in La Paz, it would be easy to assume that such a thing as a Bolivian film industry does not exist, and that the Bolivian population are more than content to watch endless blockbusters churned out by Hollywood (circa 1992) and nothing more. A request for 'peliculas bolivianos' will all too often be received with bemused stares and swift declinations, unless one copy of 'Cementerio de Elefantes' can be dug out (the one Bolivian film which seems to have slipped into the Spielberg-clad and DiCaprio-laden catalogues of DVDs in flimsy plastic cases).

But beneath the pirated veneer of Bolivia's cinematic identity one occasionally finds dazzling creations of narrative brilliance and cinematic sparkle, built upon foundations painstakingly laid out over the past thirty years. In the early Eighties Bolivian cinema found itself in a dire state of affairs; the cost and sporadic availability of celluloid film made it almost impossible for directors to transfer their ideas to the big screen for sheer lack of raw materials - as shown by the measly figure of eight (8, ocho, huit) feature length films to be scraped together in the Eighties, in comparison to the twenty-eight produced in Bolivia between 2003 and 2008 alone. This dramatic growth can no doubt be partially explained by the advent of digital photography, which helped to democratise and secularise film-making. Scavenge a camcorder from the Barrio Chino or Mercado Negro in the Graneros, and pay 8.5Bs for a pirated copy of Adobe Premier Editing Suite and you're well on your way to competing with the most renowned Bolivian film-makers out there.

With this shrinking issue of material start-up costs, both 1995 and 2006 saw booms in the film industry in terms of quantity and arguably inspiration. Where film had before been seen as little more than a political tool, in 1995 directors suddenly looked again to the simple task of telling a story, and in doing so produced unrefined yet (as a result) lucid portrayals of Bolivia and its people. Central to these explorations was the figure of the 'cholo', sometimes portrayed more sympathetically than at others. Fast forward to 2006, and celluloid seemingly goes out of the window through an unspoken abolition, being all but replaced by digital production, which was used to create every single film premiered in that year.

As well as contributing to the ever-expanding array of domestic film today, the annual Santa Cruz Film Festival now brings the hint of a promise to put Bolivia on the map as centre of independent production for the whole of Latin-America. However, burgeoning Bolivian director Yashira Jordan sees a lot of work still needing to be done for this celebration to reach its full potential: 'Despite there being so many fantastic films produced in South America this year (2010), the Santa Cruz festival lacked the necessary organisation, circulation and audiences to allow these works the appreciation they warranted.' She sees brighter horizons for PIDCA - ('Plataforma de Coproduccion Iberoamericana') - a series of conferences which ran parallel to the Film Festival, taking six films at different stages of their production and working to ensure that the directors could best achieve the realisation of their vision. Jordan's latest project - the documentary Durazno - featured on last year's agenda. It tracks the story of a person embarking upon a journey to find their true father, and with the publicity and expertise provided by PIDCA promises to be a moving account of events as they unfold.

Of her films, Yashira asserts 'they certainly contain much of Bolivia, but I don't think they are typically Bolivian, I don't think you can categorise a film with this term.' The question of the identity of Bolivian cinema is a difficult one to address. Certainly particular pioneering works have shaped the nature of Bolivian film - most recently, 2003's 1 ‘Dependencia Sexual' springs to mind. This film pioneered the use of a complex split-screen technique in South American cinema and proved to be a suitably chaotic artifice to narrate five Bolivian and American teenagers' overlapping experiences of their newlyfound sexuality. Other Bolivian directors have since responded to Rodrigo Bellot's ambitious methods by pushing their own technical boundaries. However, the diversity of Bolivian output remains, in both theme and execution, about as easy to categorise as the landscape from which it comes. With its erratic past, and a present so hard to pin down, second-guessing the next destination of Bolivian film is no easy task either. The next generation of filmmakers are to be found dotted around Bolivia in small hubs of activity, holding festivals, sharing their expertise and fusing ideas; rendering it safe to say there is no shortage of cinematic fuel in the nation to propel the industry forward. Naturally, all would-be Tarantinos and Polanskis face a struggle akin to Mt lllimani -it's as steep as it is ridged. Through legitimate outlets of distribution, Hollywood concoctions suffocate home grown products, leaving Bolivian directors stuck in the middle between overwhelming foreign influence and rampant, ungoverned piracy. This complex landscape stacks all odds against talented film-makers succeeding in creating financially viable careers in a nonexistent industry. And preoccupied as it is with more pressing concerns than the country's cinematic situation, the government has little motive or resources to prop up Bolivia's filmmakers.

Such hurdles could be seen as a filter, albeit a crude one, which ensures that for the recognition they so crave, Bolivians with ambition must be prepared to stray far outside the box in order to put their dreams to memory card-working with the mountainous problems faced by the industry, and not against it. Perhaps counter-intuitively, Victor Rivera (a La Paz-based director) argues that piracy 'is an extremely important alternative channel of distribution, which you have to learn to manage and regulate, sure, but by and large it has been more productive than destructive.' As regards the ways of combating the unhealthy national tendency to go straight for the Hollywood fare over the domestic, Yashira Jordan simply declares 'Make good films'. It is this no-nonsense yet optimistic attitude which stands the Bolivian directors in good stead for the coming years. Combine their unflinching determination with the landscape and people they have to work with (the producers of the last instalment in the James Bond saga, 'Quantum of Solace', certainly were drawn in by the rich natural resources of breathtaking film sets kept secret in Bolivia), and we surely have a recipe for future productions to conjure up levels of magic to rival Disney. And now all that remains is one task: you, reader, take off your Avatar glasses and take a real look around you; get your hands on a local film (by whatever means necessary), and press play.

A few classics and classics-to-be to get you started:

•Mi Socio - Paulo Agazzi

•La Nacion Clandestina - Jorge Sanjines

•Cuestion de fe - Marcos Loayza

•Jonas у la Ballena Rosada -Juan Carlos Valdivia

•Dependencia Sexual - Rodrigo Bellott

•Quien mato a la Llamita Blanca? - Rodrigo Bellott

•Zona Sur- Juan Carlos Valdivia

•Cementerio de Elefantes - Tonchi Antezana

•American Visa - Juan Carlos Valdivia