You know how there are extreme-low budget filmmakers who brag that they paid for their movie with a credit card, and how other people warn that it's idiocy to pay for a movie this way? It can lead only to ruin.
But maybe it's not so bad after all. Grey Matter is a movie about a filmmaker in Rwanda. The government would bankroll his movie with a grant if it were about AIDS prevention or ending gender-based violence. But he's doing a political film, an attack on political violence. He wants to include a long rape scene like the one in Irreversible. The movie he's making is about a woman who survives terrible political violence and finds herself committed to the same mental hospital as the man who attacked her.
So the filmmaker goes to a loan shark. His parents are out of town and he's already given him their car for collateral. Now he needs another million francs. It seems terribly unwise.
Grey Matter itself cost an estimated $250,000.
The director in the movie discusses a long rape scene he wants to film. He's told that he'll just make trouble for himself with the censors. Having the character discuss filming it but not showing him do so may have been the real filmmaker's way of getting the scene in as best he could without censorship.
Considering the subject matter, it made Rwanda look like a nice place. Even the loan shark seemed like a nice fellow. I wouldn't mind living there. If imperialists would just leave them alone----I don't remember the details, but the U.S. was largely behind the conflict that led to the genocide there.
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