From its conception, Wind from the East was positioned as both a response to the events of May 1968 and an enunciation of the western genre. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the co-author of the film's original pitch who was exiled for his role in the May uprising, attributes the project's genesis to profit-hungry producers eager to work with a newly notorious public figure:

Cohn-Bendit pitched an idea: ‘I want to make a western with Godard.’ Jean-Luc Godard agreed to participate and the two prepared a sketch for a story about striking mine workers in Dodge City. The Cineriz distribution company generously funded the project, and Gian Maria Volonté, the left-leaning actor who had played opposite Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and other western roles, signed on. A ‘western in colour written by Cohn-Bendit, directed by Jean-Luc Godard and featuring Volonté’ promised an appealing blend of youthful and radical post-1968 politics, New Wave style and the spaghetti-style western at the height of the Italian cycle's popularity.

It would not be Cohn-Bendit with whom Godard ultimately shaped Wind from the East, nor was the film that resulted clearly a western, Hollywood, spaghetti or otherwise. By accounts, it is surprising that a complete film ever came of the initial arrangement. Godard's circle of filmmaking collaborators was joined in Italy by members of Cohn-Bendit's radicalised student cohort from the university at Nanterre, along with a number of leftist Italian militants; few of these participants, Godard later remarked, ‘gave a damn’ about the film. ‘Collective creation’ and ‘auto-gestion’ were the rule of the day, and the assemblée générale (general assembly) that preceded a day's filming could devolve into chaotic and contentious discussions. Due to the film's generous financing the set was flush with cash, much of it rumoured to have been funnelled towards the purchase of Ferraris, vacations in Sicily and the opening of a drag bar.