Red Dog: Red Collar Worker

Red Dog captures the wild, blokey days of the 1970s Dampier. Shot on location in isolated WA’s Pilbara Region, the producers employed a low-budget mentality and called in favours to make finances go the distance. Joanne Whitehead reports.

Set in Western Australia in the remote town of Dampier, Red Dog is based upon a legend about a local stray dog, that residents claim was responsible for creating a sense of community in the 1970s, when the coastal town was barely established. A sentimental comedy that finds laughs from not just the dog but the inner workings of the male dominated mining community, it’s adapted from Louis de Bernieres’ (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) novelisation of the story.

While wholly aimed at families and dog lovers, it might come as a surprise that Red Dog was directed by Kriv Stenders, who did the dark colonial tale Lucky Country (2009) and the intense drama Boxing Day (2007). A father now, Stenders was keen to tackle something different, and had been looking to challenge himself by doing a family film when this story caught his attention. “It was one of those very rare scripts that you read and they fly off the page,” says the director. “You know exactly how to make it, and I just knew I had to make the movie… It was exactly the kind of material I was looking for and exactly the kind of scale of film I was looking at doing.”

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