Albert Serra: "Political correctness has not been able to overcome art or fiction"

Evenings of Solitude portrays the bullfighting world following bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey and his cuadrilla. Albert Serra is a walking liberté, who does not let prejudices or judgments stop him from creating a work, and who does not even believe that a documentary is so different from a fiction: after all, there is always the gaze of the one who makes the work.

With Albert Serra, we talk about what we should talk about, which is creation and intention, and how barriers between artist and spectator are broken. We are all living, discovering, sharing. What does it mean with this documentary? Nothing is "meant to be said." It is said. Words don't mean anything, words are facts. And with Albert Serra, we have shared a conversation, a unique and unrepeatable fact.

--- From what I know of you, we are not judging anything here.

--- There is nothing to judge. Who says there is something to judge?

--- Well, Catalonia and Barcelona judged bullfighting. And they didn't pardon them.

--- This is like wanting to judge that there is a beer on that table because alcohol has destroyed families. So what? Get rid of beer? Who establishes that there is something to judge? Why should we take a stand on everything? Sometimes you don't have an opinion, or you don't want to have one, or you just want to live. Without moral judgment. This is the paradise of film shoots, where the moral norms of everyday life are suspended.

--- Movies wouldn't have villains, just because they are villains.

--- Exactly. That's why there's carnival, or certain moments of intimacy, or types of scenes or people with whom permanent moral judgments are suspended. Here it is a legal and authorized spectacle (in Madrid, where I filmed it) and even children can enter, and it is interesting in itself. I have no problem.

--- But here we renounce a long bullfighting tradition.

--- I don't know how it was carried out, like so many things in representative parliamentary democracy. Every four years, some people make agreements, support each other, exchanges are made, and a more or less flawed result of the promises made is reached. We see these defects of representative democracy more and more, also with the influence of the factual and economic powers that play, that damned four-year interval during which they do what they want... The most civilized countries believe in direct democracy, and ask many issues directly to the people. Like in Switzerland. Was the people asked in a referendum, on this issue? In Switzerland, they ask people about salary limits, or about the hijab...

--- But in New York or Paris, or even Madrid, do you feel more liberated to discuss these topics?

--- They are different ways of seeing the film. From abroad, it is seen more as something anthropological, a portrait of something that exists. They assume a more neutral point of view, even if they value the innovative vision of the portrait. Here we put other personal, moral, historical, political, contextual considerations... Here we constantly debate about the visions of the country. Outside, this has no relevance and they focus on the document as a film, with all its formalistic precision. Even disregarding the content, frequently. My fans wouldn't care if I made a documentary about rockets going to the moon.

--- It exists, period.

--- And it's violent, yes. That's how it is. It's not my fault. Or why can't I make a film about Indians? Or about women's sex, just because I'm not a woman? Who says that? What law says that in any civilized country?

--- Political correctness.

--- It's on the decline. They brought it into the world of art and fiction, and they've seen that they can't do it with art and fiction.

--- Here they really can't touch us anymore.

--- Exactly, leave me alone, right? They even dared to change, censor or remove works from the past! I was reading the other day The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, an extraordinary book, and they also wanted to ban it because it deals with racism! And made by a progressive person in his time, but who still couldn't have the vision we have now. Visions are different, especially throughout history.

"It's impossible to see bullfighting the same way in the 20th century as seeing it now. And I don't judge either one," Albert Serra

--- It's just impossible to see bullfighting in the 20th century the same way as seeing it now. And I don't judge either one.

--- Things that have force, not that they have to have a message. Is that the case with Tardes de soledad, then? A "look" and that's it?

--- Especially because, when filming it, I was also looking at it. If you decide to put a camera to express something, it's because you'll say things you can't say with a book, for example. I play with image and time, because they are not still photos but dynamic images, and above all a point of view that is unprecedented. You haven't seen it, but I haven't seen it before either. Afterwards, when editing it, is when I discover it and almost put myself in your exact place. The manufacturing process consists precisely of looking for the details of things, analyzing each image with critical judgment and creating a combination that when you look at it, it's like the first time you look at it. Everything is very parallel: me looking at it, making it, and finally showing it.

--- Has the world of bullfighting been a visual dazzle, or did you also want to say something?

--- No, I didn't want to say anything specific. Or rather, I didn't know what I wanted to say. It's the images and their articulation that speak, not me. I don't know what the film will say, neither in this documentary nor in the fiction ones. I know they are going to say something interesting, that they are going to create some kind of interesting experience, more intellectual, more physical or more plastic. In fact, in this documentary I didn't even want it to be too dramatic, or too violent, or gruesome, but also to have a space for reflection. And also a touch of humor, irony, delicacy. And the plastic factor of bullfighting, of course. It could have easily fallen into highlighting the typical fanatic, provocative, Spanish, each element could have been underlined in a somewhat biased way. But this was not what I found. Nor was it the intention. It was to do it as it is, following the ethics of a documentary.

--- Reality or freedom.

--- Well, if you want more freedom, you have fiction. To begin with, what I don't like about the documentary genre is that it's more boring, you can't put this layer of fantasy, of distortion, on it, and bulls in particular are what they are. You won't tell them what to do, neither the bulls nor the bullfighters. Nor could I play Georges Bataille, associating bullfighting with sex, death... a shot with a woman looking at the subject from the stands with a fanatic face that invoked something sexual. But it's a documentary. It's not a joke. The intention was to gather elements and be faithful to them.

"We have had access to a very deep intimacy with this world, a privilege that many have not had," Albert Serra

--- Of course, the perception of someone watching the show from the front row is not the same as someone watching it on television, or from the center of the bullring. No matter how much it's a documentary, a completely objective view is impossible. We have had access to a very deep intimacy with this world, a privilege that many have not had. In a documentary, you must be faithful and objective to a reality, but all reality exists as a perception in a gaze. And that is the degree of freedom I take.

--- The same with the "actors." In a documentary there are no actors but they can have equal or more power.

--- There is a person, there can be an actor, but there is also a character. Be careful. One cannot detach from the three dimensions: even if you are acting, you are still a person. With your feelings, context, character, ideology... You are no longer just a person, you are an actor who wants to control their image. We are not the same in front of a friend or our mother, and we want to have an image that favors us.

--- A story.

--- Exactly. That's why actors live so much in tension, because they want to control their image and impose it. And what you see on screen is the final result, the character, even though the three layers of the person are there at the same time. And in a documentary, the margin to move a character more to one side or more to the other is practically nil. I tried to talk to them before each shoot, to build complicity, or to get them to let me put the mic on them more often, but very little else.

--- They are not actors, indeed.

--- However, they are aware of being filmed. And yet one of the virtues of the film is to achieve the feeling that there is no filter. Raw reality, as if they were not aware of any camera. As a viewer, you don't detect it anywhere. You don't quite understand how it was possible to do it.

--- Even with the bullfighter's suit on?

--- Yes, because they don't seem to have any intention of controlling their image at all. Zero. It's one of the fascinating aspects of the film.

"The danger is very great. It's true that now there are more prepared clinics in the bullring itself, but no one can take away the goring. And you can die just the same," Albert Serra

--- The seriousness. And the real danger. These are things you imagine, but until you see it, you don't imagine it so raw. You don't imagine the commitment it requires, the fear that reigns... And that they must be totally renewed things, in each bullfight, especially in important bullrings where the bull is more dangerous and the public's pressure is stronger. I didn't imagine there was such great tension, and that it would determine a way of being, that it would determine life so much. It's as if you now had to go to war every day.

--- They take it very seriously.

--- The danger is very great. It's true that now there are more prepared clinics in the bullring itself, but no one can take away the goring. And you can die just the same, and it happens. This combined with this passion that you don't exactly understand where it comes from, because deep down it can be associated with an artistic expression or an ephemeral spectacle, but at the same time it is a tradition that has a symbolic, sacred point. From the outside you would say that even as an artistic expression it doesn't amount to much, or at least not to risk your life!

--- And yet for them, yes.

--- Yes. For them it has that transcendence. It's like unrenounceable. A constantly renewed and quite impressive degree of commitment when seen up close. And this combined with moments of humanity, humility, fun... The members of the cuadrilla, the nuances, the complexity... And all centered on the protagonists. The public doesn't come out, the bullfighting industry doesn't come out, politics doesn't come out. I focus on the intimacy of the bullfighter and his cuadrilla. That's why it's called Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude), the solitude of the bullfighter and the group. And the solitude of the bullring. And that of the bull!

--- Life, death...

--- The vital cycle of nature.

--- Speaking of solitude: do you feel alone, do you feel little accompanied in this country? Especially with your stratospheric leap, do you see us far away or distant?

--- No, not at all. The administrations have been very supportive, although at the time my way of working was so new (international co-productions, with majority foreign funding, in French for example, but manufactured de facto in Catalonia in the important aspects) that it created a certain disproportion between what we achieved here and what we achieved abroad (which by law had to be spent in the country itself). In any case, I was obsessed with doing things with those people, and in a certain way, to achieve a certain artistic result. With Pacifiction this was rebalanced, and now also with Tardes de Soledad.

"When you do something audacious, it's very difficult to foresee the result. Not even you yourself can foresee it, imagine the rest of the people who are supposed to understand it or who are supposed to support you," Albert Serra

--- Yes, but when you do something audacious it is very difficult to foresee the outcome. Not even you yourself can foresee it, imagine the rest of the people who are supposed to understand it or support you! It doesn't seem so strange to me that sometimes it's hard to push initiatives that are much more audacious than usual.

--- And now Ukraine?

--- Not exactly. Now Russia and the United States. The eternal rivalry. Set at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, yes, the script is obviously mine, but this is not the central theme.

--- Fiction.

--- Fiction, yes. With Russian actors and American Hollywood stars.

--- Names?

--- We'll see. As my French co-producer says, who has access to the big actors, it's harder to get one of these actors than to be selected in Cannes for competition.

--- It's another world.

--- They are very serious. Very strict, very finicky. It's a very solid and very protectionist industry.

--- Protectionist?

--- In relation to professionalism. Either you are professional, or you can go to court. It's no joke.