A team of 21st-century cowboys herd thousands of sheep to summer pastures in the mountain grasslands of Montana. “A really intimate, beautifully shot examination of the connection between man and beast.” — NY Times
We begin to glimpse the rhythm that has, for more than a century, governed these hard, skillful, good-humored American lives.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2010
Sweetgrass 2009
Shot over three seasons by Harvard anthropologists Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, this film captures a team of 21st-century cowboys, the last in a long and often romanticised American tradition, as they make their annual journey, herding thousands of sheep across Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains to summer on the high grasslands of a national park. Closely attentive to the skill, harshness and relentlessness of shepherding, the film is more rewardingly fascinated by sheep than most New Zealanders would consider possible. It also contains moments of bravura filmmaking: its depiction of a miserable cowboy on his cellphone complaining bitterly to his mother about lousy weather, ornery sheep and exhausted horses is as vital an addition to the western genre as John Wayne’s slouch in The Searchers. — BG
“A really intimate, beautifully shot examination of the connection between man and beast.” — Manohla Dargis, NY Times