Sweetgrass (film)

Last updated
Sweetgrass
SweetgrassPoster.jpg
Official poster
Directed byLucien Castaing-Taylor
Produced byIlisa Barbash
CinematographyLucien Castaing- Taylor
Distributed by Cinema Guild
Release date
  • February 4, 2009 (2009-02-04)(Berlin)
Running time
101 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Sweetgrass is a 2009 documentary film that follows modern-day shepherds as they lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. It was directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, a Harvard anthropologist, and produced by his wife Ilisa Barbash. The title derives from Sweet Grass County, one of several in which the film was shot.

Contents

Production and premiere

Recording first began in the spring of 2001, when Barbash and Castaing-Taylor first heard of a family of Norwegian‐American sheepherders in Montana. These herders were among the last to trail their band of sheep long distances through Montana's mountains. [1] After 8 years of filming and development, it premiered at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. Since then it has regularly screened worldwide and distributed theatrically by Cinema Guild. In the United States, it premiered at the New York Film Festival, and in Montana at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, where it received the Big Sky Artistic Excellence Award.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%. The website's critical consensus reads, "At once tender and unsentimental, Sweetgrass gracefully captures the beauty and hardships of a dying way of life." [2] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [3]

Film critics have praised the film as "an anthropological work of art," [4] focusing on its aesthetic minimalism, such as a lack of music and narration. [5] The film is a New York Times Critic's Pick and a Washington Post Critic's Pick, [6] and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described it as "the first essential movie" of 2010. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Nobel Son</i> 2007 American film

Nobel Son is a 2007 American black comedy about a dysfunctional family dealing with the kidnapping of their son for ransom following the father's winning of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The film features Alan Rickman as the prize-winning professor and Mary Steenburgen as his wife, with Bryan Greenberg as their kidnapped son.

<i>LEnfant</i> (film) 2005 film by Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne

L'Enfant is a 2005 Belgian film directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, starring Jérémie Renier and Déborah François. The film was released under its French title in the US, and as The Child in the UK.

<i>The Slaughter Rule</i> 2002 American film by Alex Smith

The Slaughter Rule is a 2002 American coming of age sports drama film directed by Alex Smith and Andrew J. Smith and starring Ryan Gosling and David Morse. The film, set in contemporary Montana, explores the relationship between a small-town high school football player (Gosling), and his troubled coach (Morse). The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

<i>Old Joy</i> 2006 American film by Kelly Reichardt

Old Joy is a 2006 American road movie written and directed by Kelly Reichardt and based on a short story by Jonathan Raymond. The original soundtrack for the film is by Yo La Tengo and included on the compilation soundtrack album They Shoot, We Score.

<i>Woman Is the Future of Man</i> 2004 South Korean film

Woman Is the Future of Man is a 2004 South Korean film directed by Hong Sang-soo. The film was not a box-office hit, but was entered in the competition category of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and received screenings at several other festivals. The title of the film is a translation of a line from a poem by Louis Aragon that the director saw printed on a French postcard.

<i>Crazy Love</i> (2007 film) 2007 American film

Crazy Love is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens. The screenplay by Klores explores the troubled relationship between New York City attorney Burt Pugach and his ten-years-younger girlfriend Linda Riss, who was blinded and permanently scarred when career criminals hired by Pugach threw lye in her face.

<i>Silent Light</i> 2007 Mexican film

Silent Light is a 2007 film written and directed by Carlos Reygadas. Filmed in a Mennonite colony close to Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua State, Northern Mexico, Silent Light tells the story of a Mennonite married man who falls in love with another woman, threatening his place in the conservative community. The dialogue is in Plautdietsch, the Low German dialect of the Mennonites. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards, but it did not make the shortlist. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 24th Independent Spirit Awards. It gained nine nominations, including all major categories, in the Ariel Awards, the Mexican national awards.

<i>Dans Paris</i> 2006 film by Christophe Honoré

Dans Paris is a 2006 French romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Christophe Honoré and starring Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, Guy Marchand, Joana Preiss, Alice Butaud and Marie-France Pisier.

<i>After the Apocalypse</i> 2004 film

After the Apocalypse is a 2004 science fiction black-and-white film about five survivors after World War III. A single woman and four men are forced to communicate without words because of destructive gasses from the war. They are forced to recreate their lives both individually and collectively. The film does not have any dialogue.

<i>Bluebeard</i> (2009 film) 2009 French film

Bluebeard is a 2009 French drama fantasy film written and directed by Catherine Breillat and starring Lola Créton. It is based on the classic fairy tale Bluebeard, by Charles Perrault.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucien Castaing-Taylor</span> British anthropologist and artist

Lucien Giles Castaing-Taylor is a British anthropologist and artist who works in film, video, and photography.

The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University is an interdisciplinary center for the making of anthropologically informed works of media that combine aesthetics and ethnography. Production courses associated with the SEL are offered through Anthropology, Visual and Environmental Studies, and the Graduate School of Design.

<i>Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer</i> 2010 American film

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is a documentary directed by Alex Gibney about former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and the sex scandal that derailed his political career. It premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival on April 24, 2010; on iTunes and Magnolia On Demand on October 1, 2010; and in movie theaters in limited release on November 5, 2010.

<i>Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry</i> 2012 American film

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a 2012 documentary film about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman.

<i>Starlet</i> (film) 2012 film

Starlet is a 2012 independent drama film directed by Sean Baker and starring Dree Hemingway and newcomer Besedka Johnson. Starlet explores the unlikely friendship between 21-year-old Jane and 85-year-old Sadie, two women whose lives intersect in California's San Fernando Valley.

<i>Searching for Sugar Man</i> 2012 film by Malik Bendjelloul

Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in his home country of the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him there.

<i>In Jackson Heights</i> 2015 American film

In Jackson Heights is a 2015 documentary film about the community of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, directed by Frederick Wiseman. The film received widespread critical acclaim. In 2017, the film was considered the thirteenth "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" by The New York Times.

<i>Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story</i> 2017 American film

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is a 2017 American biographical documentary film directed, written and co-edited by Alexandra Dean, about the life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. It had its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and released theatrically on November 24, 2017. The film was broadcast in the United States on the PBS biography series American Masters in May 2018. As of April 2020, it was also available on Netflix.

<i>Calm with Horses</i> 2019 Irish drama film

Calm with Horses is a 2019 Irish crime drama film directed by Nick Rowland in his feature debut, and written by Joseph Murtagh. It concerns an ex-boxer who works as an enforcer for a criminal family in rural Ireland while providing for his autistic son. The film stars Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar, Ned Dennehy, Kiljan Moroney and David Wilmot. It is adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection "Young Skins" by Colin Barrett. The film was released in the United States under the title The Shadow of Violence.

<i>Gunda</i> (2020 film) 2020 documentary film

Gunda is a 2020 documentary film directed, co-written, and co-edited by Viktor Kossakovsky. The film follows the daily life of a pig, two cows, and a one-legged chicken. Joaquin Phoenix serves as an executive producer.

References

  1. ↑ Recordist’s Statement | Sweetgrass
  2. ↑ "Sweetgrass (2009)". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Sweetgrass Reviews". Metacritic . CBS Interactive . Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  4. ↑ Koehler, Robert (Fall 2009). "Features | Agrarian Utopias/Dystopias: The New Nonfiction". Cinema Scope. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  5. ↑ Lane, Anthony (January 11, 2010). "Hard Days and Nights". The New Yorker . Condé Nast. p. 82. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  6. ↑ O'Sullivan, Michael (May 21, 2010). "Movie review: 'Sweetgrass' follows Montana sheepherders on final grazing drive". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on March 9, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  7. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (January 6, 2010). "Montana Cowboys Lead, Coax and Cajole Their Charges Amid a Chorus of Bleats". The New York Times . Archived from the original on March 9, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.