Broken Horses, 16mm, silent, 3min, 2007/8 (excerpt)

A black horse and a white horse are interwoven. By checker-boarding contact prints of lap dissolves, subtle gestures and curves give way to graceful forms and elegant lines to create a lamentation of the horse’s fragile wildness, of their predisposition to domesticity. Among Thomas Jefferson’s list of advanced skills is his ability to “break a horse”. What is being broken in this expression is the horse’s spirit. Horses are no stranger to the investigative eye of the cinema, but are horses the only creature that humans can “break”?