Dodge Billingsley Notes about the Documentary, Helen Foster Snow: Witness to Revolution

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Dodge Billingsley Notes about the Documentary, Helen Foster Snow: Witness to Revolution

Based on Dodge Billingsley’s response to an email interview Oct 29, 2009

Sterling Van Wagenen at KBYU had been contacted about the Helen Foster Snow film idea. Meanwhile, Sterling had invited me out to Provo and KBYU to edit my film on Chechnya. As that was getting near completion he asked me to talk with him about this "Snow" concept. I met with him and was hooked on the idea, but still knew very very little about the project--or how to navigate BYU, the library or anything else. He gave me My China Years to read.

At that point Sterling and I met with Don Holsinger, the then current director of the Kennedy Center. There was a Special Country focus fund at the time and 50K dedicated to China. Eric Hyer, the China guy at BYU, was attached to that money fund and so I was introduced to Eric. Funny, though because we had been in the same ward in NYC 8 years earlier, the Manhattan 2nd Ward. So, we started brainstorming, I started reading Helen's works, and looking at photos to see what we had and what direction we could and should go. We started developing the project from there, hiring Sue Bergin as the writer.

After that, or in the meantime, we had to raise a fair amount of money. The university wanted to do it right--or I should say Sterling wanted to do it right. We went through Tom Lefler at the then Film Council and were rejected for funding. These were the days before HDV and we both wanted to shoot on the far more expensive medium of film rather than video. However, with the 50K Special Country focus fund we were able to reach out to potential donors to get the funding. Sterling had so much star power that he was able to secure a Mariner Eccles grant 0f 20K. [Note: Sterling was the producer of the Academy Award winning film, “Return to Bountiful.”]

That additional source of funding really helped. I made numerous visits to various colleges and the Utah Humanities Council and received additional funding. We were basically in business to start pre-production. In the spring of 1999 Eric and I traveled to China to recon the locations and get an idea of what we could really expect to shoot. A few months later, in late summer 1999, we brought the whole crew of seven to China to film the bulk of the program. We were there

about 2.5 weeks.

Q--What was your reaction to being asked to be involved with the project?

DODGE--Well, as I kind of indicate above, Sterling asked me if I was interested and then stepped away, so really Eric and I got to fashion it based on our research with really no oversight from above-that was great. Sterling had to run interference for us at BYU and the Motion Picture Studio from time to time but overall it was a very good experience.

Q--To what extent did being involved with the HFS project have an impact on your life?

DODGE--Well, it kept me in Utah instead of returning to NYC, which was the plan. After a long project like HFS, I was comfortable here and decided to stay. I don't know if that is good or bad, but the chance to shoot a documentary on film--I don't think I would have had that chance in NYC. It also connected me to China and the revolutionary art that I search the globe for. In fact, we have an exhibit of my collection up at ASU this very moment--so I guess that is definitely a

by-product of my experience on the Helen film.

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