Description

The award-winning debut feature by Filmmakers Alliance President and Co-Founder Jacques Thelemaque starring Diane Gaidry ("America So Beautiful", "Loving Annabelle", "Need"). The DVD is loaded with great extras including commentary, interviews, deleted scenes and 4 Short Films by Jacques Thelemaque.

Set against the colorful backdrop of the Los Angeles dogwalking scene, The Dogwalker follows the moving, transformational journey of Ellie Moore (Diane Gaidry), on the run from her latest abusive boyfriend.

Down and out on the mean streets of L.A., rescue comes in the unlikely form of Betsy Wright (Pamela Gordon), a misanthropic Dogwalker in need of help with her business and struggling with her own dark past.

The unusual relationship between the cranky dogwalker and her unstable apprentice sets the stage for the emotional transformation Ellie must undertake. In Betsy, she encounters a dark mirror of herself a lonely, angry, complex woman whose own troubled past proves disturbing like her own. And in the dogs, Ellie finds lost pieces of herself as she fumbles with the leash to her own life struggling to hold on as it pulls her towards a brighter future.

Cast

Diane Gaidry, Pamela Gordon, Lyn Vaus, Lisa Jane Persky, John Nielsen

Festivals

Cinequest Film Festival - Best First Feature
Ashland Independent Film Festival - Best Cinematography
Hong Kong Intl. Film Festival - Official Selection
Los Angeles Film Festival - Official Selection

Production Credits & Notes

Credits: Produced by Linda L. Miller, Hilary Six, Toni-Ann Parker, Diane Gaidry, Jacques Thelemaque. Director of photography: Marco Fargnoli. Editor: Jeff Orgill. Music: Chris Wells. Costume design: Claudia Coleman. Production design: Robert La Liberte, Joe Warson. Written and directed by Jacques Thelemaque

Director's Notes:The Dogwalker is the product of many issues and factors. I wanted to make a film with my then-wife, Diane Gaidry, that incorporated elements of our own life.

Diane once worked as a dogwalker and I decided to build a story around that particular world. But as the story developed, I become less interested in the details of dogwalking and more focused on the specific human characters and what the dogs mean to them.

Dogs are truly unbelievable mirrors of our raw emotional states. Moreover, they provide a rich allegorical context for the exploration of female anger – how it is socialized, how its manifests itself in many women. Ellie’s abusive boyfriends are extensions of her own inwardly directed rage, while Betsy is still paying the price for a rage too fully expressed. Ultimately, however, the film is about coming to terms with that energy and moving on to a place of self-forgiveness and transformation. The Dogwalker is a term that both describes the job and, metaphorically, the task of caring for our own inner selves.

Finally, the film is about my home, Los Angeles, and the often forgotten myriad of modest, though complex lives that exist within the city.