This article approaches the cinema development project known as the New Latin American cinema, by analyzing the concept of "novelty". It focuses on what led some filmmakers, at the end of the 1960s, to consider that their movies were new. It analyzes their peculiarities compared with the new European cinemas, by emphasizing the revolutionary nuances that the term "new" has in Latin America. Finally, the concept is studied by using as sources the statements and the public debates which took place during the festivals of Sodre, in Montevideo (1958), Sestri Levante (1962 and 1963) and Viña del Mar (1967).
novelty; new cinemas; independent cinema; auteur theory; revolution