Ricard Belis: “An essential part of democracy is to have people well informed”

When you enrolled for Information Science, did you know you wanted to work with documentaries?
I donʼt think so. I started studying Journalism because I enjoyed writing, and I knew that since I was very young. But, once in the Faculty, I was interested in the audio-visual world. And when having to apply for the practicum in the fourth or fifth year I did not doubt about it, my first option was TV3. It was a dream. At that moment, the TV3 model was quite leading and modern, and I was very lucky to be chosen for it.

And in 1991, when you were very young, you joined the team in 30 Minuts.
Yes. I was a production assistant in the news and in summer I changed my position to filming director. Then, when we ended the first news program as a director, I got a call from the director in 30 Minuts. I thought “Ricard, you did something wrong and will be told off…”. But that was not the case, he called me to ask me if I wanted to be an assistant in 30 Minuts. “You will not make documentaries” -he said- (there was a lot of work on trailers, shorts, dubbings for purchased programs, etc.), but after a year I was working on documentaries. (He laughs).

And after many years in 30 Minuts you joined Sense ficció.
Yes. What happened is that 30 Minuts was not an exclusively documentary program but more about reports, although it ended up covering formats that were not reports. An example is Els nens perduts del Franquisme. And people were not aware of how necessary it was to have documentaries, not until nine years ago when Mònica Terribas was in charge, and this miracle, Sense Ficció, appeared. This is the only documentary program released prime time in a television network in southern Europe, competing with others such as Master Chef or Supervivientes (Survivor), and it reached a large audience.We have to thank TV3 because they went for it and ended up creating the Catalan audience and getting them used to watch this.

To watch and enjoy it, despite the crudity in some covered topics.
Absolutely, these are not nice topics, and they upset you.

Because what you do is to uncover issues that were hidden, you make negligences visible, denounce injustices and in short, raise awareness.
Yes, because this is the essence in journalism, although some people in this country forgot about it. I think a documentary is a lever to change the world. And in order to do so, we have to speak for those who cannot do so, and bother those in power by uncovering hidden things.

And that is not easy I guess.
No. Thatʼs not easy. And the main difficulty you face is a lack of resources, because in order to do all these things you need time. The media you work for has to invest in time to do research.

At least if you want to do so rigorously.
Thatʼs it. For example, in Els internats de la por we have witnesses for twelve cases, but we created a database of about two hundred cases. Why? Because sometimes you do not have physical evidence and you have to reach the witness. And this person can lie or remember things in a wrong way, or may not want to speak. But in some way, when you find people who do not know each other, that they come from different parts of the country but talk about similar experiences, that has an evidential power. In historiography they say that if there are three witnesses confirming the same situation without knowing each other, that evidence is as valid as a document.

Regarding the witnesses, and talking from experience, do you think people want to speak?
There is a bit of everything. Lots of them see a “repairing situation” with your work. For instance, in the case of boarding schools, they can see a recompense that was never done by the church or the state asking for forgiveness. Regarding Francoism, the biggest damage is not only the one that infringed the repression: their husbands being shot, their kids being taken, the abuses, etc. The worst is that, with the arrival of democracy, these victims expected some apology and instead, democracy was silent. There is a strong internal pain and for some of them we are a repairing tool for what happened. In the same way, very legitimately, there are people who prefer not to speak. These things are very intimate, sometimes they havenʼt told these things to their partners and they will not do so in front of a camera. The other thing is that, since the moment when such a big means of communication with such a large audience, lots of people have not had any contact with the documentary also feel defended because you are telling their story. They see they were not the only ones, they were not unlucky, it was a general thing.

Are there more favourable moments than others in order to get people talking?
Yes. Many times itʼs about finding the right time. A clear example is the documentary Jo també vull sexe!, on the role of the sexual assistant for disabled people, which is a difficult and tabooed topic. We tried to treat this topic three years ago but it was not possible because it was too new, people were starting to talk about this but it was not normalized.

And, after three years, when you decided to go back and work on it, was it normalized?
Not completely. But the second time we tried we did it at the right time, sometimes you donʼt know why this happens, but although the topic was not normalized or known by the audience, the ones involved decided to come out and do so. They really wanted to talk about it. And despite at the beginning we thought it would be a hard documentary to do, having to cover or pixel faces, it was quite the contrary.

What was the spectatorʼs response?
Something curious happened with Jo també vull sexe!. Although audience figures were high -it was the fourth program with more audience that day and leader in its range- it was not “overwhelming”. It thought it would be better. Personally, I thought this was a beautiful documentary, about love. Instead, many people -before watching it- thought it was a morbid thing, like “do you think so?”. There was an important previous refusal. Sometimes, the spectator does not perceive the documentary the way you do. Before releasing it, I spent time trying to convince my friends that it was a beautiful topic, and they didnʼt believe me. People didnʼt want to see those bodies, because they felt uncomfortable. Another interesting thing is that this one is by far the most successful one on the internet: 100.000 downloads.

Do you get a lot of calls after releasing the documentaries?
In the case of Pastilla busca malaltia, there were several letters to the director. In Què mengem?, on food toxics, there were different reactions: the section of Chemistry in IEC and an ERC deputy from Lleida -because they work with pesticides in agriculture- asked a question in the Parliament during the control session of the director of TV3. They claimed us to criminalize non-ecologic agriculture and said many other things. But there have not been any consequences other than that: a letter, a question to the Parliament, Facebook messages and others in the blog of the program, etc. It is part of the function of a documentary, it is polemic. It has to create comments, good or bad ones, but the thing is, people have to talk about it. If Twitter is dead during the release, it means something is wrong. You have to cause some reaction.

Have your superiors told you to leave some topic aside due possible reprisals?
It is subtler. Usually, the reasons they give to avoid a topic are not those. They say “do you think the audience will be interested in this?”, “this is too difficult”, or “letʼs do this one, but be careful”, which is what happened for instance, with the electricity supply companies documentary Revolució Solar.

How did that one go?
Some were worried but it went great. We were worried because this topic may not look very TV-like: solar panels are not attractive; and also, because itʼs something quite complex to explain: electric bills, how the Spanish electrical system works, etc. It wonʼt win any award and we did not enjoy it as much as Jo també vull sexe!, because itʼs not as fascinating, but I think it is a public service documentary which is absolutely necessary, and with which we got to tell people that although being the country with more sun hours in Europe, we use it only to sunbathe instead of using this energy to make electricity. And this is the beginning of a change. One essential part of democracy is to have people well informed, otherwise they will not properly choose their politicians, they will not choose properly as consumers. One of the big problems in Spanish democracy is that we have a lot of access to information but this is low quality information. Being fast and being the first is more and more important nowadays and that means information is not completely confirmed, because there is no time. Big media have rejected -mostly- to do deep journalism. And people are not aware of how dangerous this can be for society.

Which documentary brings you the most special memory?
If I had to choose one that marked my life, that would be Els nens perduts del franquisme, without any doubt. The release of this work has a before and after. It brought the concept of historical memory to the first line (in this country), which was quite unknown here. And the total success of this documentary enables Montse Armengou -with whom I worked on many documentaries- and me to open a research line we could not have started in any other way. My career would not have any sense without Els nens perduts del franquisme. If we talk about loving one, that would be Jo també vull sexe!. It is very different from the ones we normally do and it was about love. There was a great atmosphere while working on it and we had fun. If I had to choose the documentary I like the most as a result and the one which required more work it would be either Els internats de la por or Avi, et trauré dʼaquí. The latter was voted for by the spectators as the best documentary in the five first years of Sense Ficció, and that is always the best award you can receive.

Which is the main message you give to your students of Audiovisual Communication?
The love for the anonymous hero, the importance of recovering anonymous voices and telling little stories. I tell them to give less importance to the leaders and politicians, who have all the attention now. I tell them the anonymous citizen should be saved and defended, they have to look for these stories and make them visible. And another important thing I tell my students -and they look quite shocked- is that we film without having a script. Because you have to be open to things that can happen or people who will talk about things you didnʼt expect, and that is not a nuisance but luck itself.