Lights … camera … action! Are the orders that for more than fifty years (1954-2004) have been constantly repeated in Durango, a.k.a. 'the Land of Cinema', for in the City and its surroundings had been filmed dozens of movies, some of which were enacted by renowned actors from Hollywood, as Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, Dany Devito, John Belushi, Michel Douglas, Kevin Costner, Anthony Quinn and Paul Newman, just to mention a few of them.

John Wayne was the performer of a very peculiar case, who acquired a ranch in Durango because his obligations kept him spending more time in this Mexican State than in Hollywood. Several of the movies this famous actor starred here settled new records on the big screen accounts. Finally, its property would be turned into a cinematographic set.

The success of Durango in the celluloid is sustained by the beauty of its natural landscapes, its nearly always clear skies, its brightened environments and of course, the colonial features of its Historical Centre. These issues became evident for the first time in the scenes of the movie "La Vida de Villa" (1912), which recounted the revolutionary struggles of Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

Many years later, in the year of 1954, the Twenty Century Fox did in these lands the western "Pluma Blanca" "White Feather". Some time hence, at the northern side of the City a 'cinema corridor' was built, comprising several cinematographic sets with buildings and ranches which resembled those of the 'old West' of North America.

During the decade of the seventies, an average of seven movies were filmed every year. In the present days, the rush of the seventh art has considerably diminished, but in the year of 2004 was rolled here a comedy starred by Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek. A total number of 131 movies were filmed here in Durango.

• Los Álamos, is a dummy town that was built in 1988 for the filming of a movie about the making of the atomic bomb in the City of Los Alamos in New Mexico, USA during the decade of the forties. The construction of it took one million dollars to be accomplished. It is located at the kilometre 35 of the Interstate Highway 115.