A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

Western television doesn't understand that approach either: to work without a script would be unheard of. That you might have a learning process out of which the film develops is total anathema. I am very strongly aware of how revolutionary this project is going to be in terms of the existing mass media. I can't really talk much about some of the internal meaning of the project for fear it will sound too abstract. I talk most about the way in which the film will very, very publicly ask people to challenge the way the media is functioning. One of the aims of the film is to compel the film establishment and the media to actually deal not only with "content," the nuclear issue in this case, but with the effects of conventional media language on the issue and on the widespread feeling of powerlessness about the issue.

Anyway, if you can understand that there are difficulties

here

in dealing with this process, you can image how difficult it is in the Soviet Union. We're dealing with the Soviet Peace Committee, which is the internal peace organ in charge, I think, of all internal peace arrangements and all peace people who visit the Soviet Union. I'm going to sit down in front of these people, and I'm going to be quite open about what this film is about. I'm going to ask them to help us give the film top priority, to say that the film is absolutely essential. If they won't do that, I won't go there: I'll find some way of doing it outside the Soviet Union. [The Soviet Union agreed to a family sequence which was shot in Moscow in August 1984.]

MacDonald: The War Game

is a painful, powerful film. Will this new film be similar?

Watkins:

I've never repeated any film I've made. And I'm not interested in doing that. I won't think about

The War Game

. This film will make me work in different ways. The blending of the various elements will be entirely different. One thing I plan to do, that I've not done as overtly before, is to deconstruct some scenes. I'd like to show the effects a cut has, how a scene is constructed.

MacDonald:

You mean that the film will move back and forth between narrative and self-reflexive examination of narrative.

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Watkins:

Yes, though I think you can use "narrative" here only in the very loosest sense. The film will be constantly moving from one set of people to another. There will be a certain chronological drive which will be interrupted from time to time by self-reflexive moments.

I really wouldn't like to project how television companies are going to react when asked to show the film, a self-reflexive film which is not just a didactic exercise on the blackboard, but which confronts the issue in the context of nuclear war. But the film will be put on the desks of all the television organizations, in each of the countries where we film. And you can be quite sure there will be people ready to make a strong challenge when any of those companies reject the film. I'm quite sure there will be a sizeable rejection. The only thing I cannot project is who will do the rejecting. Neither can I be sure about the cinema distributors, some of whom are very conservative, some of whom are very helpful.

I'm going to try it all, because that's the only means one has of reaching large numbers of people. And I want the film to earn money, because it's important that money comes back into the groups that helpedand into the movement toward demilitarization. But I can't rely on that, as I know from bitter experience. So we're going to try to set up an alternative distributionit's just a theory at this pointasking different groups to start a series of showings in local halls, in churches, at universities, in

public

places where there can be rigorous debate on the material the film is dealing with. I want that to happen a great deal. I'm going to aim for that, because that's the nearest equivalent in distribution to the way in which the film is being made. It's organized to be part of a discussion that explodes upwards and outwards.

MacDonald:

In this country most films that have tried to deal self-reflexively with film and media language and to provide alternatives to it have tended to be shown in the art ghettos in big cities; despite the wishes of many of the filmmakers, the audience never expands very far. For me, what sounds remarkable about this project is your attempt to bridge the gap. You're not just talking about film, or about making a film about film; you're using the making of a film to demonstrate and develop new kinds of relationships between producers, films, and audiences.

Watkins: