Documenting Doc Rowe

A new project is on its way from documentarians Tim Plester and Rob Curry (co-directors of The Ballad of Shirley Collins and The Way of the Morris). The pair is finishing up a feature-length piece on Doc (David) Rowe, a filmmaker who has collected hundreds of hours of footage of seasonal events across the UK. From the infamous Cheese Rolling of Gloucestershire to the more niche Election of the Mayor of Ock Street, Doc has witnessed and recorded it. As a young film graduate in 1963, Doc happened to see the Padstow Mayday festivities. Utterly enthralled, he spent his life from that event onwards hitchhiking around the UK, recording all the rituals and events he could find. At the beginning, his documentarians tell us, his equipment consisted of ‘a bagful of kit salvaged from BBC skips.’

Guy Fawkes © Doc Rowe

Although Doc has gained much recognition (an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Sheffield for ‘research work into vernacular culture and traditional music’ is but one example), his life’s work remains undigitized. Alongside the documentary on the icon, Plester and Curry have launched a fundraising campaign to digitise and store all of Doc’s footage. ‘If we hit our target [of £25000],’ they explain, ‘we will be able to permanently secure the material for posterity. The material [will] be digitised to BFI specifications, and then housed in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in Cecil Sharp House, London. We will also explore how [it] can ultimately be shared with the communities that it documents and with the wider public.’

The crowfunder campaign supported by famed faces of folk including Billy Bragg, Bridget Christie, Boss Morris, Ben Edge and Eliza Carthy, launches today (October 19) and closes on November 17. You can donate to it here. The launch date of the film, released by Fifth Column Films, is yet to be announced, but a teaser can be found on the Fifth Column website.