The Disappearing American West // November 2019 Update

What’s the one thing that we can come together on? 

What is the image of the American West? Why do we cherish these lands as our cultural identity? What images are conjured by those words, “the American West”? Is it the light, the cowboys, the color, the vastness? There is something magical about this landscape. 

And that’s something we all can agree on, right? 

We’ve changed as people and as filmmakers through the making of On Strange Soil. Each time we return from Southern Utah filming on On Strange Soil, we find ourselves changed in one way or another. This last shoot to Utah proved to be the most challenging and a turning point / pivot in the story we set out to create. 

This last shoot marks our eighth trip to get out to the landscape, to track an inspirational story that we’ve been at work on for over a year, to gain access to this side of the story in the debate over our public lands.  Moreover, to film the importance of what the identity of the American West means to us, as Americans. 

As over a 100 head of cattle kick up dust into the wispy dusk yellow and blueish November light, a hard working family continues to practice what their ancestors on the same land have done for generations. Horseback mounted, this iconic American scene comes to life in front of our lens. This is more than a vocation, and their voices should be taken with an equal weight into the involved conversation about our public lands. 

This film has always been meant to create a “Thanksgiving table”, where we are all family. Emphasizing that we all share in a love for the same things, our family, our livelihoods, and our cultural traditions. We have strayed away from the table over the years, but while we might debate the petty differences that perceptually divide us, it’s truly the land that forgivingly unites us. 

- Thomas Kolicko, On Strange Soil Writer & Director