The great illusion... and the great disillusionment

On Monday night, TV3 and Canal 33 counterprogrammed with two documentary offerings. On the one hand, the second season of [title of documentary] premiered. The great illusionThe documentary series about the history of Catalan cinema. The first season, directed by Àlex Gorina and Esteve Riambau, premiered in January 2019. Fortunately, the program's tagline is accurate: it's an "intermittent narrative." In this new season, the first two interviewees have sadly passed away. Actress Marisa Paredes and director Josep Maria Forn died in 2024 and 2021, respectively. The series may have been tucked away in a drawer for some time and was perhaps retrieved due to an emergency. The program strives to maintain the magical and meticulously crafted visual style of its beginnings and remains a very good format both visually and in terms of content. The script always prioritizes the social and political context to emphasize that Catalan cinema is not an isolated phenomenon, and, when appropriate, it knows how to connect the past with the present. It has an informative spirit but never descends into a tedious encyclopedic narrative nor does it operate solely through chronological inertia. The new season begins in the 1960s, in the midst of the dictatorship. The narration of actor Francesc Orella guides us through the country, in a kind of road movie which showcases Catalonia as a location for international film shoots. The series skillfully incorporates film clips and magnificent archival footage, and above all, highlights key figures in Catalan cinema. The great illusion It's more than just a program: it's a theoretical corpus worth organizing and immortalizing.

Meanwhile, simultaneously on Channel 33, the first episode of another documentary series was airing: Montserrat, ancientA journey through ten centuries of history and culture surrounding the sanctuary. Montserrat is a mountain brimming with stories, possessing exceptional narrative potential, but what we saw was disappointing. With greater television ambition, a long saga spanning multiple genres could have been created: there are legends of blood and liver, spirituality and mystery, myths of UFOs and paranormal phenomena that have made it a magnetic place, treasure hunters, war episodes, and movements. Monarchs, dictators, and Nazi leaders have passed through. There are the marks of fires and floods. Human tragedies and romantic stories. Great political, social, and cultural negotiations that have made the monastery a place of tension, encounter, and great influence. There is a magnificent landscape, and it is a space of erudition and high intellectualism. There are monks and children. Montserrat can nourish thrillersEpics, dramas, and supernatural tales that could have provided as much material as Mount Tor. And yet, Montserrat, ancient It's a dull, boring, slow, outdated, simplistic, timid, precarious, and conservative series. Montserrat deserved much better.