ATTENTION
That showtime has passed. Please try next available showtime.
USA, 2011, 80 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Animals, Documentary, Social Issues Programs: Documentary Films, Environment in FocusLanguage: English
DIRECTOR: James Anaquad Kleinert Editor: James Anaquad KleinertCinematographer: James Anaquad KleinertPrincipal Cast: James Anaquad Kleinert, Sheryl Crow, Daryl Hannah, Raoul Trujillo, Michael Blake, Willie Nelson
Director, producer, and cinematographer James Anaquad Kleinert’s riveting documentary has a Colorado connection. Disappointment Valley, about 60 miles from Telluride, seems aptly named—it’s one of the sites at which the Bureau of Land Management is conducting round-ups of wild horses. This systematic destruction of whole bands is happening across the American West; the complicated issues at stake are the crux of this documentary, which is bound to leave viewers outraged.
Despite the 1971 passage of the Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burros Act, wild horses are being captured and left to languish in disease-infested facilities that cost taxpayers some $120,000 a day. They’re then sold to slaughterhouses in Mexico, who sell the meat for human consumption. The reason for the round-ups, according to Anaquad Kleinert, is that the land the horses roam also happens to be rich in desirable minerals; mining corporations are motivated to circumvent environmental-impact investigations and regulations that prohibit extraction on protected habitats.
Some of these companies have been strategizing for decades to work around the legislation that prohibits them from drilling. In the case of southern Colorado, the interest is in uranium, which would be processed at the controversial proposed Piñon Ridge Mill in Paradox Valley. Meanwhile, Anaquad Kleinert’s beautiful footage of a still-wild West shows us just what we are at risk of losing. And that would be a Disappointment, indeed. —REBECCA CARO
Sponsored by Consulate General of Canada in Denver, Queen Anne Urban Bed and Breakfast