Concept for a documentary series

 

The idea for a documentary series first came to me during the pandemic as I was sorting through and scanning thousands of slides that I had shot during my time in Spain. While there my wife, at the time, and I traveled extensively across the Iberian Peninsula every time a break in our teaching schedule would allow. My background in photojournalism led me to seek out stories everywhere we went.

 

There were so many stories: such as picnicking outside the Olympic Stadium, watching the Olympic torch pass by on its way inside, (too cheap to pay $100 for seats in the arena to watch the opening ceremony), and seeing the flaming arrow crest the top of the stadium wall having just lit the official flame inside; finding my way into a press conference and a meet-and-greet with the president of Catalunya, using an old press card I had and banking on the fact that I was an American with a lot of cameras, (the President was amazingly gracious and friendly, The American Consul General at the time less so); the discovery that every little town and village had its own unique and fantastic festival accompanied by music, food and often outrageous and dangerous acts of bravado, like La Patum, where one false step could literally get you trampled to death, knocked unconscious by a giant paper mâché figurine, or disfigured for life from third degree burns from the fireworks carried by the demons strategically dancing throughout the crowd.

 

Along with writing down and recording the stories that my slides were reincarnating for me, my family and I were watching all of the travel documentaries we could find on Netflix, Curiosity Stream, PBS and such.  We were doing our best to travel vicariously when no other option was available; everything from Werner Herzog's poetic and dramatic Encounters at the End of the World to the rustic but engaging French documentary series, The Silk Road by Alfred de Montesquiou.  I had long since given up photography as a vocation, moving on to teaching Science for several years, audio recording and engineering, songwriting, flying small airplanes and learning and practicing medicine.  But over the past few years I found my passion for images rekindled as I started dabbling more in video production.  As I watched many of these documentaries, I was remaking them in my own mind, And I realized that, I too, had a lot of stories to tell of a life in foreign lands… “My Spain” was born.