Little Dog for Roger was one of a group of 16mm films that Le Grice made using 16mm printing and developing equipment he built himself during 1967. The source material for the film was a box of damaged 9.5mm home movies that he had rescued from the basement of his parent's home in Plymouth, Devon. It had originally been shot by his father and shows his mother, the terrier dog and himself and his younger brother.
Where possible, when Le Grice showed this work in the 1970's, he did so on two screens side by side. As it becomes increasingly difficult to adjust projector speeds in 16mm, and even in some cases to find good 16mm projectors, he has now made a video version. "In 1950 when I was about 10 years old, my mother would have been around 30 and my father just a little older. This time difference, which was not particularly significant to me when I made Little Dog, becomes increasingly part of my meaning for the work now that it is half a century away. This photographic 'time-bomb' is even more disturbing with the animation of the moving image. Though my conscious concerns at the time I made it were with the medium and material, my choice of material and particularly of the sound show my unconscious engagement with the subject and its sentimental attachments."
"Well ‚ I thought it was about film as a medium and material ‚ scratches, sprocket holes, dirt, slippage in the projector, blank screen, gaps in the soundtrack ‚ I forgot that one of the boys was me, the other was my brother, the young woman was my mother ‚ now dead ‚ and behind the camera was my father ‚ now dead ‚ see the cyclops ‚ the dog was mine ‚ nothing to do with Roger ‚ that is another story."
