OG: La Commune (2000) kind of revitalized my interest in his films, and pretty soon after that I laid my hands on cassette of Edvard Munch (1974) and saw that for the first time. That was probably about a couple of months before I met him, and that was a revelation; that really fired up my interest in doing something with his films

When I met him, I was a little bit shocked that none of his films were available, apart from War Game, Culloden (which the British Film Institute put out on DVD in the U.K.), and I think Punishment Park was out in France, and that was about it. Nothing certainly in North America, and it seemed like quite a challenge.

There was also the issue of Edvard Munch, and the fact that I’d just met him and he was a little bit sort of despondent about the availability of his films. Peter had a report from the storage facility in Stockholm that had the original negative which stated it was damaged; there wasn’t a protective element or duplicate element or interpositive at all. The film was effectively close to being lost, and I’d just seen the film and was pretty well caught up on it and I thought, ‘This is out of order.’

The owners of the film – the producers are the Norwegian and Swedish TV companies – were terribly disinterested in the film, so it was just lying there. I subsequently found that a 35mm negative of the short version (the cinema version) was sitting in a non-climate-controlled basement in London and was in terrible shape; so that wasn’t any kind of a backup.

We eventually made an interpositive, and we’ve since donated materials to the Cinematheque Francaise, for example, and got new prints out, and we’ve got a 35mm element in Toronto, but when we got Deluxe Laboratories here to make prints for theatrical reissues, that’s when I really found out Edvard Munch was in terrible shape, because Deluxe were very concerned about whether they could produce an acceptable print from the actual negative.

MRH: Is that one of the costliest parts of putting together a DVD – the fact that you come across a print that needs a great deal of work?

OG: The costliest part is certainly any restoration work that is necessary. Absolutely. For a distribution company or a DVD label to get out there and do a major restoration job usually is totally impractical. For new films, of course, that’s not an issue, because there are top quality video transfers that are there, and you have the wherewithal to release a film on DVD for just the cost a Digital Betacam master.

If you go to a film that has not been touched, as in the case of Edvard Munch, since the 1980s –

MRH: But that wasn’t that long ago –

OG: Yes, but the demands on both television and DVD today is digital technology. We could talk about lots of examples of this, one of which is a film of his called The Journey / Resan, his very long, 14 & ½ hour peace film. It’s nineteen 45 min. parts… Rightly or wrongly, his position is, ‘That’s the way the film is.’ The restrictions or demands of the market are not a factor.

This issue is dealt with in La Commune and in the accompanying short film The Universal Clock (2001) that was made by a friend and associate of Peter’s called Jeff Bowie, a Canadian from the National Film Board [NFB].

The Universal Clock is about just that: the forty-five minutes of programming that TV demands for an hour time slot, and when Peter made La Commune, he originally went into it with the intention of making a regular two-hour movie; instead, he ended up with this five and a half hour movie.

To a certain extent and to their credit, Arte, the French TV station that financed, didn’t take it out of his hands and cut it down to two hours. When he cut it, Peter himself made a short version that’s two and a half hours, but that’s another story.

Let’s just briefly come back to the point of The Journey and the matter of restoration. The Journey was made between 1983-1987 as a peace film. It was actually shot all around the world – Australia, new Zealand, Polynesia, France, Scotland, Canada, the States, Germany, Japan – and basically it is about the role of nuclear weapons and perceptions of Hiroshima, as of the 1980s.

As you can imagine, it’s a very intense, dense, and earnest and academic study of a very important political issue, and one that Peter spent a lot of time on, and poured a lot of energy into, like he does on all of his films.

I say sometimes to people that Privilege could be the last one of the Watkins series from Project X, because what we have left are films like The Journey, or Evening Land (1977), or Seventies People (1975), all of which are in one way or another difficult. But I’ve come this far; there is the completist in me, you know, as I’m sure there is in you as well, so you understand that.

So how can I ply myself to these other films that would probably have great difficulty covering costs just to publish?

That’s something I want to work out, but The Journey was shot on 16mm film and transferred to video in the 1980s (and therefore analogue 1” video), and that is the existing master of the film.

I can tell you that there is the original negative in Sweden; there are all sort of film elements – magnetic audio tracks, interpositive print –in storage in Stockholm at the Swedish Film Institute; there’s a 16mm screening print here in Canada at the NFB; and there’s a 1” video master with Facets in the U.S.

So what to do to try and get The Journey out there? It’s clearly not an economically practical option to go back to the film element and make a new digital transfer.

This is a conversation I have with Peter all the time, but there’s only one way that that would be feasible, and that’s if a broadcaster came up to the plate and said, ‘Right. Okay. We would like to license the film if you had a decent quality master, and we’ll pay you “X” amount,’ and if that “X” amount would justify and cover the cost of going to the original film elements in Stockholm; doing anew transfer; and doing all the sort of dirt cleaning, given the film elements are in good enough condition (as I’m sure they are).

That would be the only way that it would be practical to get The Journey out in a new transfer.

So the only alternative as far as I’m concerned, if I pursue this completist angle, would be to go to the existing 1” video analogue master, which is probably a decent-looking video master, and author that for DVD and make it available to Watkins completists as well, to peace groups, etc.

Quite honestly, The Journey is a film where the actual technical qualities are of less importance because it’s actually the content – what the film has to say – that’s important; I think that if you have an inferior video version, then it’s not going to harm the film as much as it would do with Star Wars, a more flamboyant piece of cinema.