Jackalope reviews The Caveman of Atomic City and My Life as a Film, part of the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival

Santa Fe’s biggest film festival has kicked off, with events around town and on the SFUAD campus through Oct. 23.

This year’s catalogue includes films that will make you cry, films that will make you laugh, films that will make you question your own moral sanity and many genres in between.

The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival‘s New Mexico Shorts Program of 2014 has again reminded the Santa Fe film audience that the voices of New Mexico are alive and well. This year, the Center for Contemporary Arts screened five selected short films, some of which were shot in New Mexico and others which were made by New Mexican filmmakers. The commonality stops there. From documentary-style narratives to formulaic Westerns, the themes and stories ranged in all genres and in all styles. The variety, perhaps, reflects that original guerrilla-filmmaking spirit which set the festival’s foundation six years ago.  A Horseback Ride to the Soul, directed by Aimee Barry Broustra SFIFF Description: For the rider and non-rider alike “A Horseback Ride to the Soul” explores the ways in which interactions between human and horse can lead to a deeper understanding of our selves and our relationship to the world. An official selection of the Albuquerque Film and Media Experience and Long Beach India International Film Festival, “A Horseback Ride to the Soul” is more documentary than narrative, but we can overlook that due to the multiple categories the content explores. First, the location of a Santa Fe Ranch filled with beautiful horses makes for some gorgeous cinematography. Second, the subject of horse and rider relationship is not your typical rancher’s story. The technique is Collaborative Horsemanship, and it implies “an approach to groundwork and riding implementing prey-to-prey communication” in order to “establish a relationship of trust between human and horse.” The program is facilitated by Kelly Wendorf, native New Mexican and CEO of The Institute of the Southwest, who believes in a non-aggressive approach to riding. “How can human best serve horse?” Wendorf says in her interview, “How can human, through congruency, act as a herd leader?” Wendorf introduces the term “horse therapy” in her program and the technique becomes especially convincing when...