Gone to the Dogs

'Gone to the Dogs' is a 24 minute documentary film, made as part of Channel 4 series New Shoots: Taking Disability in New Creative Directions. The film was directed by the researcher, commissioned by and broadcast on Channel 4, Sunday 8th April 8.25-9.00am and Saturday 14th April 5.40-6.15pm 2007.

The research focused on the rapid cultural and economic changes taking place within the UK dog-racing world. Once popular ‘working class’ activity, going to the dogs was a family affair. Today dog racing can be viewed online at home or in betting offices across the country at a smaller cost than the price of a ticket. What is encountered instead, at racetracks like the one in Walthamstow, is a considerably changed cultural environment.

Beginning with the ideas expressed in James Clifford’s ‘The Predicament of Culture’, change is not configured in the research as disorder but as a global space of cultural connections and dissolutions in which local authenticities merge with newer urban practices. The researcher’s film shows the viewer different aspect of the subject without privileging any one above the others.

A number of ‘characters’ were interviewed and background research undertaken by the researcher who also wrote an early script and proposed script. A shooting schedule was drawn up and an editing schema was outlined. A transcript was prepared for Channel 4’s legal team. The ‘characters’ included a veteran bookie who had worked at the Walthamstow track nearly all his life, the new corporate hospitality staff who like the other staff still ‘clock on’, regular customers who came to bet, win and outclass the bookies, and two young women who chose cocktails and bets because of their names. These are representatives of local authenticities and newer urban practices. Editing was undertaken to present these different voices with equal value.

The ‘New Shoots’ series was established to foreground the work of film directors with one or more physical disability.