Xtra-vision ventures deep into the Bolivian jungle to explore the making of Steven Soderbergh’s biographical masterpiece, Che.

"I was drawn to Che as a subject for a movie, or two," notes director Steven Soderbergh, "not only because his life reads like an adventure story, but also because I am fascinated by the technical challenges that go along with implementing any large-scale political idea. I wanted to detail the mental and physical demands Che’s two campaigns required, and illustrate the process by which a man born with an unshakable will discovers his own ability to inspire and lead others."

Steven Soderbergh’s Che, an epic production divided into two distinct features, presents what the director, working closely with lead actor Benicio Del Toro, screenwriter Peter Buchman and producer Laura Bickford, sees as the two defining periods in the life of political icon Che Guevara: the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivian Expedition.

Part 1 tracks Che’s rise in the Cuban Revolution, from doctor to commander to revolutionary hero, opening on November 26, 1956, with Fidel Castro sailing to Cuba with eighty rebels. One of those rebels being Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentine doctor who shares a common goal with Castro - to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Che proves indispensable as a fighter, and quickly grasps the art of guerrilla warfare. As he throws himself into the struggle, Che is embraced by his comrades and the Cuban people.

After the Cuban Revolution, Che is at the height of his fame and power. Then he disappears, re-emerging incognito in Bolivia, where he organizes a small group of Cuban comrades and Bolivian recruits to start the great Latin American Revolution. This is the period covered in Part 2. The story of the Bolivian campaign is a tale of tenacity, sacrifice, idealism and of guerrilla warfare that ultimately fails, bringing Che to his death. Through this story, we come to understand how Che remains a symbol of idealism and heroism that lives in the hearts of people around the world.

"Forty years after his death, there are many reasons why Che remains a potent symbol today," explains producer Laura Bickford. "He’s clearly an image of youthful rebellion and idealism and I think those two things are eternal… timeless.

"We were never interested in Cuba’s current politics," she continues. "We’re filmmakers who were making a movie about a specific period of time as seen from Che’s point of view. To that end, we talked to everybody on every side and all of our research went into the script.

"We spent three years researching what eventually became Part 2. The original idea was to explore one part of Che’s life in great detail, but what we found was that by just doing Part 2, you didn’t understand the context in which he made the decision to go to Bolivia. When we decided to add Cuba and New York and began working on the structure, it just kept getting bigger and bigger. That’s when we realised we needed to make two movies. It was going to be a massive job."

Though shooting proved as challenging as expected, Soderbergh waxes lyrical on the attractions of jungle living. "I loved Bolivia. I loved being out there. We had a pretty small crew throughout and just looking around and being out in nature with a small group of people all trying to do the same thing, I totally felt in tune with what Che must have felt.

"There’s something exhilarating about it and something energizing about it. I was always fascinated by the fact that Che kept going back into the jungle. And when I started the project, I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t seem to make much sense. But I thought, ‘Well, it made sense to him, so I’ve got to follow that.’ But it wasn’t until I was out there in the middle of it that I realised, ‘Oh, there’s a physical part of it that you can’t articulate that he was drawn to.’ There had to be. It made so much more sense to me once I was out there."

For Del Toro, his journey as an actor started long before he and Soderbergh ventured to the jungle. "The process of playing Che was very different for me than other movies I have made," he allows. "In this case, as a real person, you start with the man himself, and what he wrote. This led us to seven years of research into what other people wrote."

"Benicio’s a very physical actor," adds Soderbergh. "I think that shows in the movie - it’s part of the reason that I don’t isolate him in close-up a lot, because his physicality is really important to him and he spent a lot of time making sure, when we had scenes with Che doing something that he probably did ten thousand times, that Benicio looked like he’d done it ten thousand times too. And there’s really not a shortcut to that. It’s just repetition and homework, and he loves that kind of stuff. He’s totally dedicated to making it look like he knows how to handle an M1."

Del Toro also had the benefit of working with advisors who had known Che, and able to coach him on all the little details. "They’d say things like, ‘In this scene, these people would be present. Che would probably be sitting. And they would be arranged like this.’ Or, ‘They’d be arranged like this, and he’d be standing here, and he would be pacing like this.’ It was really, really helpful for all of us to have that kind of detail. Or, I remember in one instance, somebody showed up on the day - one of the actors - and started to roll his sleeves up, and our consultant said, ‘No, no, no! Che would never let you do that. You’re always buttoned up. You know, your shirt’s always buttoned, your sleeves are always buttoned, no matter what.’"

"I don’t think we could have made these two movies," available this week from Xtra-vision, "with the amount of money we had had Steven not been directing. The speed with which we needed to move was a big challenge every day for the cast and crew," concludes Bickford, "but somehow Steven kept us going, and all together. It really was an incredible achievement."