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For much of his career as a documentary researcher and producer, Juan Andrés Bello has given voice to others.
“I always think of my work as helping people tell their own stories,” said Bello, a professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) and expert in archive materials.
In the absence of direct visual records, Bello creatively uses photos, footage, textual records and oral histories to help convey what’s missing. Often, it’s representation.
Western professor Juan Bello (left) and ‘True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power’ producer Leslie Norville at the FOCAL Awards gala in the U.K. in June 2026, where Bello was recognized with a 2026 FOCAL Award for his work on the film. (Jed Leicester/Shutterstock/FOCAL)
This past June, his efforts to fill those gaps were recognized at the FOCAL International Awards, which celebrate excellence in the use of archival footage across creative and cultural industries.
His work on the documentary True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power, which explores Montreal’s civil rights and anti-racism movement in the 1960s, earned the award for Best Use of Footage in a History Feature. Bello’s imaginative use of archival footage helped provide context, mood and emotion.
The film features a story of students who staged an anti-racism protest at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University. Many were children of immigrants who arrived in the 1950s.
“There were no records focused on their childhoods, or the discrimination they faced,” Bello said. “We tried to reconstruct and evoke life in Montreal at that time using archival materials to illustrate their emotions.”
His research led him to the National Film Board of Canada collection, where he found footage of life in Québec in that historical period, including wintertime in Montreal, among other relevant material.
“We used footage of a terrible storm in the 1950s to recreate the emotional journey of these kids and to represent their experiences being bullied in a classroom for differences like the colour of their skin or accents. It set the stage, the mood and put people in that time.”
Building trust, telling truth
Over the past 20 years, Bello’s independent films and projects have covered a wide range of subjects, from architecture, history and cultural heritage to human rights in both Latin America and Canada.
Bello also worked as one of the lead archival producers for Black Life: Untold Stories, a documentary series about Black Canadians that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and now streams on CBC Gem.
He called it a groundbreaking project because of the previous lack of representation for Black Canadians.
Part of the challenge was finding an accurate reflection of everyday life.
“When we approached TV networks looking for footage from Jane and Finch in Toronto in the 1970s and 1980s, every single time that neighbourhood was in the news it was in connection with crime,” Bello said. “That’s so unfair and inaccurate in terms of painting a true portrait of life in that community at that time.”
Instead, Bello relied on family photo albums and owners’ willingness to share them.
“It’s about building trust and being respectful,” he said. “Sometimes, people are very generous, sharing materials and giving you access to their photos or home videos, but I think it’s about working with them as partners and collaborators.”
Questioning content, creators
Unlike today, when everyone carries a camera in their pocket, photography was once limited to those with wealth and power. Bello said that can make it harder to find a record of events or daily life. It also demands a critical lens.
“You must always question archive footage and consider the conditions of these records and the intentions of the creators,” he said.
During the Great Depression, Canadian government images promoting a nationwide system of relief camps for single, homeless, unemployed men presented a vastly different story from the reality of the physically demanding labour the men did in exchange for room and board and 20 cents a day.
“When you see images of those men, it looks like they are having a good time at work and at Sunday concerts, but the working conditions were terrible,” Bello said.
In 1935, the harsh state of the camps prompted a mass protest and the On-to-Ottawa Trek, where workers headed to the nation’s capital to demand reasonable work and wages. Bello captured their journey in his documentary Never Forgotten.
Testimony as archive
A recurring theme throughout Bello’s body of work is his use of storytelling to bring awareness to historical human rights violations and injustices. His 2018 documentary The Chalatenango Massacres reflects the state-sponsored massacres that killed tens of thousands of civilians during the Salvadoran Civil War. The atrocities, long denied by the Salvadoran military and government, are brought to light in testimonies Bello gathered from survivors.
“It was an oral history project, where we followed survivors to the places where the massacres were perpetrated, to hear what they remember about those terrible events,” Bello said.
The film serves as an important archival record, as does his earlier work Queen of the People, about the first democratic elections in his home country of Venezuela in the 1940s.
“When I spoke with the protagonists of these historical events, they were elders already, and have since passed away,” he said. “Now, those interviews are important records of their experiences.”
Telenovela Archives: Exploring history, impact of serialized dramas in Latin America
Bello’s interest in the past also extends to popular culture. He’s helped preserve the cultural memory of television in Latin America as curator of The Telenovela Archives: The History of TV Series in Latin America 1950-1999. The travelling exhibition was created in collaboration with Arts and Humanities professor Constanza Burucúa and is currently on view at the University of Miami. A version for Canadian audiences, co-developed with FIMS professor Basil Chiasson, is on display in the FIMS and Nursing Building and Weldon Library until the end of the year.
The exhibit chronicles the history and cultural influence of the telenovela, serialized fictional dramas that began on radio before moving to television in the 1950s and 1960s and becoming a global phenomenon. Through archival images, stories and memories, Bello explores how television helped shape the political, social and cultural history of Latin America and beyond.
Faculty of Media and Information Studies professor Juan Bello in front a photo wall featured in The Telenovela Archives: The History of TV Series in Latin America 1950-1999. Bello curated the travelling exhibit to chronicle the history and cultural influence of serialized fictional TV dramas in Latin America and beyond. The exhibit is on display in the FIMS and Nursing Building and Weldon Library until Dec. 2026. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
One powerful example is Ven Conmigo (“Come With Me”), which aired in Mexico from 1975 to 1976 and followed the life of a literacy teacher. The show boosted enrollment in literacy programs in Mexico, prompting India’s national broadcaster to create an adaptation, Hum Log, in the 1980s to advance literacy and support other development goals, including family planning, health and equality for women.
At the opening of the Western exhibit, Bello was struck by comments from a visitor from India. She recalled, in vivid detail, how her family gathered around the television during dinner to watch the show, illustrating the impact it had on their daily and future lives.
“I never had the opportunity before to hear a firsthand account of that experience. It was very meaningful,” Bello said.
The Telenovela Archives: The History of TV Series in Latin America 1950–1999 exhibit is on display at Western through December 2026, on the first and second floors of the FIMS & Nursing Building and in the mezzanine level extension of Weldon Library.
