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The making of The Films of Marti Oller

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Montseny Nature Park and Camargue by Marti Arañó Oller both got 4-star awards at BIAFF 2009. Marti notes that he only speaks Catalan (a Spanish dialect) and a little French, but he has made many of his films available with commentaries in English. Here he explains his obsession with wildlife filming.

Filming the life of the creatures of the forest

Still from 'Montseny Reserve Park'. I am 65 years old and for the last 20 years I have been a truck driver.

My love for film started in my childhood, but because of the ignorance and poverty of those days film making was unthinkable. At age 26 I bought my first camera. It was a Super-8 one.

A result of living in the countryside was that I found it very easy to observe nature. I was intent on somehow filming the life of the creatures of the forest. In those days in Spain, you could see on television, documentaries made by a one of the most important naturalists of his day, Dr. Rodriguez de la Fuente. I consider myself a disciple of his.

Dr. Rodriguez de la Fuente

Dr. Rodriguez de la Fuente was an outspoken champion of nature reserves and wildlife refuges. He was a vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund. His television series Man and Earth was very influential.
Still from 'Montseny Reserve Park'. I also have the fortune to share this passion with my wife, and we know many people who care about nature. Throughout this time we have had several awards from festivals like AgroFilm (Slovakia), POL-8 (Poland), Waga Brothers International Festival of Nature Films (Poland), Cotswold International (UK), Guernsey Lily (Channel Islands) and several in Spain.

The cameras I have used are a  Canon XL1 and Canon XL2 usually on a Libec tripod. I edit with Pinnacle 10.7. The English language commentary on my films is often done by my daughter, who is Australian and sometimes by others. Everything else I do with my wife. Our movies are planned while observing nature.

People sometimes think my films are "holiday movies" and this is not so. For example, the documentary Camargue involved a lot of patient work over 9 months, going to the Camargue region every weekend once a month to be able to take shots during the different seasons of the year.

In principle I think of one animal, but that often changes. Ideally I want a subject that I cannot remember seeing elsewhere.

- Marti Arañó Oller

Still from 'Montseny Reserve Park'.


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