Tamar Lando

Land With No Rider

The land of southwestern New Mexico is contoured by rolling hills and sweeping valleys and streaked with arroyos. Land With No Rider centers on four cattle ranchers who know this region of the Mimbres River Valley like the back of their hands. As they speak about their lives, their ruminations often linger like poetry, noting the sound of snow falling or singing softly along with the radio. They rise with the sun and still tend to their herds at dusk, the soft purple hues tingeing the light as the ranchers reflect on the possibility of being the last of their generation to work this land. Director Tamar Lando’s transportive vérité portrait of the often solitary yet beautiful world of these ranchers is part oral history, part patient ode to a valley in transition.

Our Mother the Mountain

In the remote mountains of Southwestern New Mexico that has long been a ranching country, only a handful of men still know the old cowboy ways. Our Mother the Mountain is a documentary poem told entirely in the voices of three old cowboys who eked out a hardscrabble existence in rough terrain. This is an elegy before they will disappear, a story of solitude, loss, and rugged beauty.