Bronx Princess

POV Community Engagement & Education Discussion GuiDe Sweetgrass A Film by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor www.pbs.org/pov POV BFIALcMKMgARKOEuRNSd’ S ITNAFTOERMMEANTTISON Boston , 2011 Recordist’s Statement We began work on this film in the spring of 2001. We were living in colorado at the time, and we heard about a family of nor - wegian-American sheepherders in Montana who were among the last to trail their band of sheep long distances — about 150 miles each year, all of it on hoof — up to the mountains for summer pasture. i visited the Allestads that April during lambing, and i was so taken with the magnitude of their life — both its allure and its arduousness — that we ended up following them, their friends and their irish-American hired hands intensely over the following years. to the point that they felt like family. Sweetgrass is one of nine films to have emerged from the footage we have shot over the last decade, the only one intended principally for theatrical exhibition. As the films have been shaped through editing, they seem to have become as much about the sheep as about their herders. the humans and animals that populate the footage commingle and crisscross in ways that have taken us by surprise. Sweetgrass depicts the twilight of a defining chapter in the history of the American West, the dying world of Western herders — descendants of scandinavian and northern european homesteaders — as they struggle to make a living in an era increasingly inimical to their interests. set in Big sky country, in a landscape of remarkable scale and beauty, the film portrays a lifeworld colored by an intense propinquity between nature and culture — one that has been integral to the fabric of human existence throughout history, but which is almost unimaginable for the urban masses of today. As we began work on the film, i reread Wordsworth and realized he was not the unfettered romanticist of my memory. until Wordsworth, all writers in the pastoral tradition — from theocritus and Virgil, through Petrarch and Garcilaso, to Marot and spenser — had idealized and allegorized shepherds out of bodily existence. Where would you ever encounter a shepherd snoring, peeing or cursing the loneliness or drudgery of his work? With Sweetgrass , we transposed the genre to the Amer - ican West, where we sought to convey at once the allure and the ambivalence of the pastoral. We tried to give a sense of what it is like to spend months at a time alone in the mountains with 3,000 sheep in one’s charge. We also — as preposter - ous as it may sound — tried to evoke what it was like to be one of those charges, to be a sheep in an impossibly large band herded up to 11,000 feet the moment the snow melts, and down again as autumn approaches. in a sense our film bestializes the humans, as John Dewey argued all art should, recoupling our humanity with our base animalism (something to which we seem increasingly oblivious). But we also subjectify and at times anthropomorphize the sheep. i wore the camera on a har - ness all day long, whether i was filming or not, so that human and ovine alike would become indifferent to it and just be themselves without constantly composing themselves for the camera. i foreswore interviews, scripting and reenactments, as i was more concerned, as James Agee famously put it, “to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is” than to listen to peo - ple interpreting their lives after the fact, with all of the attenuation and affectation that allows. And when i was not filming — which was most of the time — i was learning, little by little, to be a herder. As it happens, we ended up documenting the last sheep drive there will ever be into the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains. supplementing one’s deeded land with grazing permits on barren public lands has been integral to the American West since homesteading days. But economic pressures and urban environmentalists have conspired to bring the century-old tradition to an end. the ranch has been sold to an out-of-state banker who visits for a couple of weeks each summer. the sheep have been taken to market. the herders now work as hired hands down on the flat lands, where they break horses, put up fences and help out with calving. the mountain wilderness has been restored to itself, free of visitors except for the occasional hunter or hiker. And the film Sweetgrass is complete and stands as a modest record of a world that is, suddenly, no more. spending the summers high in the Rocky Mountains, among the herders, the sheep, and their predators, was a transcendent experience that will stay with me for the rest of my days. Lucien Castaing-Taylor , Recordist DISCUSSION GUIDe Sweetgrass |2 POV FILMMAKERS’ STATEMENTS Producer’s Statement “i am the last guy to do this and someone ought to make a film about it.” so spoke old-time rancher Lawrence Allestad in 2001, about the fact that he was the last person to drive his sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka- Beartooth mountain range on a grazing permit that had been handed down in his norwegian-American family for generations. Filmmakers and anthropologists living at the time in Boulder, colorado, we wanted to make a film about the American West and were instantly intrigued by the topic. We drove up to Big timber that summer, ready to make a film called “the Last sheep Drive.” our cars were loaded to the brim with three camera rigs, a bunch of radio microphones, our two kids, a dog and a babysitter. For the first few weeks we woke at 4:00 a.m. to help drive the sheep through town and then up the roads toward the hills. it was a family ad - venture for us, and a family enterprise for the ranchers — with kids, grand - parents, neighbors and passersby all helping. it soon became clear, however, that because of the growing grizzly bear and grey wolf population, taking the kids up into the mountains would be impossible. so Lucien went up without us, hiking and riding, while i filmed other events in town — rodeos, dog trials, shooting contests, haying, the sweet Grass county Fair. When Lucien came down from the mountains that fall, he was unrecog - nizable — bearded beyond belief, 20 pounds lighter, carrying a ton of footage and limping. He would later be diagnosed with trauma-induced advanced degenerative arthritis, caused by carrying the equipment day Filmmakers Lucien castaing-taylor (l.) and night, and need double foot surgery. and ilisa Barbash When we started to watch the footage, we realized that we had two, or Photo courtesy of more, different films. (And so many different points of view that i thought Rose Lincoln/ Harvard news office about calling the film “A Piece of the Big sky.”) We decided the most compelling story for a feature film was the one that had originally interested us: the sheep drive itself — as ritual, as history, as challenge. even then, we had a good 200 hours of footage to wade through. Little did we know that this would take us about eight years. in the meantime, we went back up to film lambing, shearing, the following year’s sheep drive and the one after that; we also moved to the east coast. (We started joking that we’d call the film “the Penultimate sheep Drive.”) Most of the footage, how - ever, is from that first summer. (in 2006, the ranch was sold, along with most of the sheep. We finally settled on the title Sweetgrass . While the journey is tremendously hard, it is undertaken not just for the literal goal of reaching (sweet) grass, but also to carry on tradition against all sorts of odds. there is a silent 1925 documentary, called Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) by Mer - ian c. cooper, ernest schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison, about a heroic seasonal trek (transhumance) of herds and Bakhtiari herdsmen in Persia. Sweetgrass tips its hat to that film and is a tribute to past and contemporary people who still manage to eke out a bittersweet living on the land. Ilisa Barbash , Producer DISCUSSION GUIDe Sweetgrass |3 POV TBABcLKEg OROF ucNOdN TINEFNOTRS MATION cREdITS 4 Introduction Writer 5 Potential Partners Faith Rogow, PhD 5 Key Issues Insighters Educational Consulting 5 Using This Guide Background Writer 6 Background Information Kristine Wilton 6 The American Cowboy 6 Ranching, Public Lands guide Producers, POV and Legislation eliza Licht Director, 8 Sheep and Cattle Wars Community Engagement & Education, POV 8 Sheep Production Today Jamie Dobie 9 The Allestad Family Coordinator, & The Last Sheep Drive Community Engagement & Education, POV 9 Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Design: Rafael Jiménez Mountain Range and Copy editor: Natalie Danford Sweet Grass County 10 Sensory Ethnography 11 General Discussion Questions Thanks to those who reviewed this guide: 11 Discussion Prompts Ilisa Barbash 12 Taking Action Producer, Sweetgrass 13 Resources Lucien Castaing-Taylor 15 How to Buy the Film Recordist, Sweetgrass INTROducTION Sweetgrass (81 mins.) is a contemplative elegy depicting the using a grazing permit that had been handed down in twilight of a defining chapter in the history of the American Allestad’s norwegian-American family for generations. West. it follows the last sheepherders to lead their flocks of As an outreach tool, Sweetgrass asks viewers to both cele - sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains brate and question romantic depictions of cowboys, the for summer pasture. shot between 2001 and 2003, the film West, wilderness and ranching.

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