* Please note: We've now added a $10 reward. For this, you get a thank you note from the Dog.

We're raising finance to produce a preview/trailer for this feature film. We'll then use that preview/trailer to showcase all the elements of the film and approach financiers, to raise the money for the feature.

We know we need to produce a high standard trailer to convince potential funding partners that our concept will work. The money raised will go into minimal cast and crew costs, location and catering fees, art department and post-production. We can make a great preview/trailer for this money. So, please come along for the ride.

We're a group of experienced filmmakers and visual artists.

If you'd like to see some examples of Donna and Michael's work with the Smoking Dog, please go to this Youtube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLWOReQcYGE

You can also check out their work at www.mcraeandvale.com
 
Look at our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Le-Chien-qui-Fume/288013600460
 
 Or follow  @lechienquifume on Twitter.

Information about Donna McRae's previous feature film is at www.johnnyghostfilm.com.

Liz Burke's previous feature can be checked out at http://www.facebook.com/MissingInTheLandOfGods

Short Synopsis

Le Chien qui Fume - A Smokey Life is a feature film about the nature

of truth. In this story Sylvie Gaspard, an Australian academic, turns art

detective and discovers that the world is a far, far stranger place than

she had imagined.

Long Synopsis

“All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie”

Bob Dylan Things have changed (2000)

Imagine a Great Dane that wore a dark suit with white silk scarf, stood on its hind legs and smoked - a “Smoking Dog” that lived in the last century and influenced and inspired a number of celebrated and obscure artists. But all these art works have remained hidden… until now.

Le Chien qui Fume - A Smokey Life is a playful feature film in faux-documentary form that seeks to uncover an alternative, secret history. Did the Smoking Dog exist? And, if so, what was his connection with the work of artists such as James Ensor, Andre Breton and Arthur Rimbaud? Or is he just a figment of an artist’s imagination?

Sylvie Gaspard, an expert on Surrealist poetry, takes us on an international journey to discover the secret of this fabled creature and his place in the history of modern art. Informed by rarely before seen paintings, old film footage, and interviews with art critics, theorists, and collectors – this secret history will change the way you think about art, truth and possibly life itself.

After inheriting a painting brought from Belgium to Australia by her great grand father, Sylvie becomes convinced that this might be a lost work by the great Belgian artist James Ensor. She takes the painting to a variety of experts to seek its provenance but is disappointed by their skeptical response. This unusual work, depicting a troupe of performing dogs, a Chinese woman and the Smoking Dog of our story, becomes the catalyst for an incredible journey…

Sylvie is catapulted into an international search, to Belgium, Paris and Hong Kong, in order to prove the authenticity of the painting. Before long, however, she realizes that the painting is merely a gateway to an even greater mystery - the increasingly likely existence of its subject, the amazing Smoking Dog. Along the way she meets art experts, shady collectors, grandchildren of European painters and all sorts of unlikely people as she edges closer to uncovering the secret of this remarkable creature.

Caught between two worlds, the Smoking Dog - no longer a dog and certainly not a human - tries to understand the purpose of its existence. As Sylvie discovers more about this dog she realizes that what she is really looking for is the answer to an existential question – “Who am I and what is my purpose?”

Le Chien qui Fume - A Smokey Life looks into the meaning of truth by investigating an alternative or secret history. Sometimes witty, sometimes melancholy, Le Chien qui Fume - A Smokey Life is also a portrait of faith. By defending the outsiders of history, Sylvie Gaspard discovers that the world is a far, far stranger place than she had previously imagined.