A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

How much are you trying to raise?

Watkins:

If you add up the target allocations I've set for each country, it comes to nearly five hundred thousand dollars, but I have a safety margin built in. Even if you were trying to raise money in just this country over the next year from public and cultural funds, five hundred thousand dollars would not be impossible. We're trying to raise it in countries all over the world.

MacDonald:

What's your goal for the two U.S. episodes you plan to shoot?

Watkins:

About a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a bit more than a third of the budget. Another third will be coming from Sweden: the Swedes are trying to raise about a million crowns [approximately $150,000]. The other third will be raised elsewhere, in eight countries or so. In Sweden we've applied for two main grants. The National Film Board of Canada has offered to provide me with stock and costs, which I think means stock and equipment. But even if it means stock, that will be very helpful.

MacDonald:

But, even should you get some of the grants, much of the money will still come from individuals and groups in the various countries trying to raise money on their own?

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Watkins:

Yes, the public process. A large amount of money will come from that.

MacDonald:

When you were in this country in spring of 1983 you spent some time trying to get money from Hollywood, from Canadian commercial TV, and other commercial sources. But I had a sense even then that part of you wanted to generate funds on a more local basis, on principle.

Watkins:

That's right. I wasn't ambivalent about the principle at all, but at that point I was concerned about the practice. It takes a long time to raise money. You can't be quite sure, until you're underway and really rolling, how people will respond to a particular project. It's a very special and individual chemistry, dependent on the time you're in, on the nature of the subject, on so many things. I tried to raise money publicly in England last year when I wanted to remake

The War Game

. That project was stopped by Central Television. We had started the public fund-raising there, though I'm not sure if it's fair to judge the results or not. At the time the project was stopped, we had raised around thirty-five thousand dollars. That was a national appeal concentrating mostly on England, but it went on for only about two months, and I think it tended to peter out once people thought that Central Television was paying for the film. So it's hard to say whether that rather small amount of money was a warning or not, but it did show me that the process could take a tremendous amount of time. We were trying to find several hundred thousand dollars.

MacDonald:

At what point did the idea for this film become international?

Watkins:

So much has happened in the last year and a half. I've been around the world twice just this year. So I can't remember exactly, but the idea was already germinating by the time we tried approaching Home Box Office and Hollywood last spring.

MacDonald:

I know you want to shoot in the Soviet Union. How do you mean to arrange that? Do you know other filmmakers who have worked that way?

Watkins:

There are Western filmmakers who have worked in Sovietbloc nations, of course. There have even been some international television linking arrangements, and I think they're trying now to link citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, and citizens of Leningrad for

The Day After

[1983]. I'm not sure which citizens. But I don't know anyone who's done what I'm trying to do: deal with a major subject, with different yet common perspectives from all the major countries involved.

I don't know if the Soviet Union has ever been involved in this kind of process before. We're approaching the state authorities. It's very difficult because Soviet state authorities are extremely slow-moving; they're

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like the Indian state authoritiesextremely bureaucratic, very much wanting to make sure that what comes out is favorable to the existing regime, or whatever. I'm approaching them saying that I don't want to have to deal very much with constraints. This is a film that can't function with the usual constraints. I told the Soviets that I wanted to film with a non-party family. After all, I'm not filming with a U.S. "party" family: some Washington family, fresh out of some Republican committee. There may lie the crunch. They've never had to deal with a nonstructured project like this before, something that isn't all detailed on paper. They just don't understand it.