Broadcast: On Location
By David Rabinovitch, director, SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION

Men and women are tied to stakes on platforms in the main plaza of a Spanish town. Facing them on a dais, an inquisitor in hooded robes condemns them. As the crowd jeers, guards with torches light the pyres.. We have stepped back in time more than 500 years, to 1484, and the awesome terror of the Spanish Inquisition. It is a day of hell, in high definition.

It is September 24, 2004, and we are on location in the remote 14 th century Spanish village of Maderuelo shooting scenes for the docudrama miniseries SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION. Based on original archival research, we have set out to re-create the personal stories of some of the victims of the Inquisition, set against the larger backdrop of history.

A Spanish actress is playing one of those victims – a woman named Cinfa Cacavi who has been charged with heresy for continuing to observe Jewish customs after she is baptized. She has been tortured to obtain her confession, and now – we are back on the day of hell set – we are filming her inserts, her reactions as she is forced to watch her husband being consumed by the flames. The intensity of the moment is enhanced by the authenticity of the setting. The location where we have built our set for this dark pageant had been the site of similar ceremonies. Everything is true. Of course, no one will be burned here. We are shooting through a flame bar. The fire marshals will shut down the set when the wind comes up.

I found Cinfa Cacavi's story in the municipal archive of Zaragossa, Spain. Since the Inquisition was a legal procedure, every interrogation was transcribed by notaries. There are said to be more than 85,000 files of the Spanish Inquisition still in existence – some, like Cinfa's, more than 500 years old. Under a green glass desk lamp, I turn the pages of the centuries-old parchment-bound book, scanning the beautiful calligraphy that will reveal Cinfa's haunting story. When we have her file translated, we will learn every detail of her life, in her own words.

Historical documents like the transcript of Cinfa Cacavi provide the original characters for the series. Every word spoken in the characters' voices comes from their transcripts. (Later, in post-producton, we will work with a very talented group of voice actors, reading from inquisition transcripts and other documents.) As we shoot, I am inspired by the idea that we are honoring the tragic memories of these victims of the inquisition by bringing them to life, on film. Some of their voices speak across more than seven centuries.

The series has an epic sweep - episode one is set in medieval France, episode two in Spain during the late middle ages, episode three in renaissance Italy, and episode four across all three countries during the 19 th century. Locations in Spain will stand in for locations in France and Italy.

The company will grow to more than fifty crew members. We cast more than 40 principal roles, hundreds of extras, horses, sheep, dogs, and pigs. The crowd scenes are populated by local villagers whose reactions to scenes like the day of hell bring a natural emotion to their sun-etched faces. Many of the non-professionals will turn in powerful performances – the limping villager who plays the head of the heretic family in episode one, the student from Cordoba who plays the Venetian Inquisitor in episode three, the Spanish production accountant who, upon donning Dominican robes, announced that he had become the Inquisitor of Bologna, or the boy chosen from a monastery school who portrays Edgardo Mortara in episode four.

Film pioneer John Grierson once said that documentary is the creative re-arrangement of reality. Docudrama combines the documentary sensibility for realism and impromptu human moments with the craft and invention of drama. We shoot with two hi-def cameras. Behind the A camera is Pieter Stathis, a young lighting cameraman with experience in Canadian feature films. Behind the B camera is Tim Metzger, a seasoned documentary cinematographer. Their complementary styles become the cinematic expression of docu+drama - interpretive lighting on the master shots from Pieter, up-close-and-natural angles from Tim. As the schedule is tight, we take to shooting the rehearsals. Tim rarely takes his eye from the viewfinder or his finger off the trigger, capturing many stolen moments that will help us incredibly when we come to editing – another exploration of the docu+drama approach.

Our search for authentic locations takes us across Spain, from the thousand year old castle of Calatrava, where all of the gear must be hiked up to the pinnacle of a mountain fortress, to Moorish palaces in the south and the sixteenth century monastery at Ucles, which we rent for a week. The only location impossible to duplicate is Venice during the Renaissance. As it is far too expensive to shoot in modern Venice, the establishing shots are ultimately portrayed through a CGI treatment of paintings by Canaletto.

In addition to my directing responsibilities, I am also the executive producer. Through years of negotiation the series has assembled the backing of an international group including broadcasters from Canada (VisionTV) and France (FR5), an Australian distributor (Beyond), and production partners in Spain (New Atlantis) and Canada (Insight. The crew includes Canadians, Spanish, Bulgarian, Argentinian, Chilean, Australian, French.

The production is financed in multiple currencies – and the exchange rates become our enemy. When the production was budgeted, the euro bought only 90 cents U.S. At the start of pre-production the euro has risen to $1.20. The falling dollar against the rising Euro will result in hundreds of thousands of (pick your currency) vanishing like smoke from special effects. After two weeks of shooting we are in danger of shutting down.

On a cool October evening, after an exhausting12 hours of shooting, I am leaning over a parapet of a fourteenth-century fortification, holding my mobile phone in the only spot where I can manage faint reception. Across a nine-hour time difference, I am talking to Marty Thompson, our lawyer in Vancouver, trying to get a bank loan approved. We have 36 hours to transfer funds so that we can carry on. We spend the weekend cutting scenes, slashing whole story lines, to bring the production in line with the new reality of the rapidly changing global economy. Finally, Marty comes through. More important, so does the bank loan. We pare down the crew – and keep shooting.

After a hundred days in Spain, we are shooting the final scene. We are at a decrepit former monastery called Talamanca. The crew is shivering with cold, and rats are running through the centuries-old rafters. The designers have dressed an elbow set (a corner) to represent the medical amphitheatre at the University of Padua in 1547. It has to match the reactions of our student characters, shot on a stairwell in a palazzo in Cordoba a month earlier. I have promised the crew that I will play the corpse on the table being dissected. But I have had a terrible flu for a week, it's too cold, and I am too ill. The extras coordinator is the only body available – he'll play the corpse. We get the shot. It's time to go home. We have survived the inquisition.

November, 2005. A year later, SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION is edited, scored, mixed, and ready for its premiere on VisionTV.