Privilege (1967) should've been a mainstream hit for former documentarian Peter Watkins, but in spite of starring Manfred Mann's Paul Jones (who also sings) and supermodel Jean Shrimpton (in her first and only dramatic film role), the film wasn't well handled by distributor Universal, and it virtually disappeared from public view, except for the odd bootleg VHS.

The commercial failure of Privilege (as well as derision from film critics) pushed Watkins to leave England for good, searching for financial and creative backers who would be more accepting of his docu-drama style, and the exhaustive research that was part of each film's gestation.

Project X's recent DVD of Privilege is an important even in the indie company's history because it's the sixth volume in the label's Peter Watkins series, and as owner/producer Oliver Groom explains in our lengthy interview, it may be the last of the director's more accessible works, leaving a handful of extremely rare documentaries whose length and subject matter are either more niche oriented or demanding for Watkins' fans.

How Project X came about and its association with Watkins work marks the intro of a detailed discussion of what's involved in releasing the films by a severely marginalized director.

Mark R. Hasan: In setting up a distribution label (which is already a pretty tough venture to begin with), you chose one of the most controversial filmmakers that England ever produced. How did that come about?

Oliver Groom: I had run for about three years a British film Festival in Toronto, and had wanted to raise its profile by collaborating with the Cinematheque Ontario. I had proposed, round about the year 2001, a series of Peter Watkins films, and I got blown off. They eventually did the series with enough of a time gap for it to become their idea and not my idea (that’s the city kid in me talking), around 2004, with his direct involvement.

Right at the beginning, I decided to set up a DVD label, Project X, and the principle idea was to concentrate on British films. There were still some British films – principally newer British films – that didn’t get released here in North America that I felt were both worthy and worthwhile, and at that particular time I discovered through the internet that Peter Watkins was living in Hamilton, Ontario. This was probably around 2003.

MRH: Really?

OG: And I thought, ‘Hamilton, Ontario? That’s like a hundred miles down the road,’ and so we made contact, and he agreed to meet us (that’s my wife and I) and for one reason or another it got put off, and then finally we managed to sort of get down there and meet him. He was kind of diffident at the time. I dare say he had plenty of gushing fans descending on him. We probably sat and spoke for about an hour and a half and rather hit it off.

My awareness of Peter’s films goes back to the sixties when I was very young and tried to sneak into the now-legendary shows of The War Game (1965) at the National Film Theatre, but they wouldn’t let me in (much to my outrage), but I did sneak into the press show of Privilege at the Warner Theatre in Leicester Square in April of 1967, and I supposed that was the first Watkins film that I saw.

And then he kind of disappeared off my radar a little bit. I brought Punishment Park (1971) to the University Film Society I was running at the time, and then because Peter was working mostly in television and his films weren’t getting around much at all, I wasn’t seeing any of his films. I wasn’t really aware of what he was doing.