Marc Cistare de Las Pelotaris
Las Pelotaris 1926, a The Mediapro Studios and TelevisaUnivision production for ViX, is a “quite aggressive and transgressive” bet, according to its showrunner, creator, and writer, the Spanish Marc Cistaré. Although it’s a period series, the montage is modern, also the type of music used and the characters do not “necessarily move as people 100 years ago”.
Cistaré emphasizes that it was a decision to show a time that did not create barriers, and that felt close to the current world.
Asked about how they innovated with this series, he said he does not set innovation as a personal goal, it is about telling stories that have not been told. “As a screenwriter, I always say that the most beautiful thing that can happen to me is to travel unexplored paths and discover universes and stories that have not been told. That is very stimulating for the creator and I think it is also for the public. For me it is the essence of this trade, getting into alleys that sometimes would be scary, but you have to do it.”
He explained that two main elements make this content universal: the appeal of the story since they are the first sports professional women, “who laid the cornerstone of women’s sports, which is now when it is beginning to take its rightful place;” and the conflicts “that with which we deal with are universal.” He pointed out that the series forces us “as a society to face a mirror, where we believe that we have progressed a lot in 100 years, but in terms of women’s issues we have not advanced even a tenth of what we should.”
He mentioned that one of the challenges they faced was shooting on two continents, in three different geographical locations with three very different crews. “There was a core team involved in all the processes. It was complicated. Then facing something that I had never done in my life, which was a period series, although we took certain liberties because I was interested in a series that, beyond the period, showed modernity,” he said. Another was recorded in all the locations, limiting the camera shot “and seeing all the things that in post-production you have to delete, change. That has been tremendously complicated.”
One of the anecdotes of the filming was how the height of Mexico affected them. “We have shot in wonderful places in Mexico, but the altitude affected the Spanish who are not used to it, they ended up dizzy.” For instance, the art director, Fernando González, the same director of Vis a vis and La Casa de Papel, during the recording in the Lagunas de Zempoala, which is 3,000 meters above sea level, “threw his hands to the head because he couldn’t stand being at that altitude.”
ViX: Las Pelotaris continues building bridges between Latin America and Spain
