Monday, January 31, 2011

Buck Brannaman Documentary: Real Life Horse Whispering at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival



Congratulations to Cindy Meehl and Cedar Creek Productions. Their documentary "Buck" was not only selected to be shown at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this week in Park City, Utah--it has won the Audience Award!

Buck chronicles the horse training phenomenon Buck Brannaman. Or should I say non-training. Or anti-training. Or alt-training.

Whatever you call what Buck Brannaman does, you can be sure that this film will spread Buck's non-violent horse handling word.

It will spread it around the world, as a matter of fact. The documentary was acquired by Sundance Selects for distribution in North America; it was also picked up for theaters in Australia and New Zealand by Madmen Entertainment.

I'm sure a lot of blog readers who've been around the horse world for a while will see the irony in this story. Buck Brannaman was the inspiration for the 1998 Nicholas Evans novel, The Horse Whisperer. When that novel was made into a film, it starred and was directed by Robert Redford. Technically, I guess you could say, Robert Redford played Buck Brannaman.

And Robert Redford is the man behind the Sundance Film Festival.

And so it goes.

Buck Brannaman and Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Buck's the star of the film this time. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America, mirrored from Zimbio.com)
The trailer gives a hint at how the film approaches who Buck Brannaman is and what he does. Once it gets to the theaters (unless you happen to be in Utah this week), take people to see it. Horse people, non-horse people, just people. They might learn a lot, so might those of us who think we know it all already.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
 
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