BBC Basque Film Series – The Last Link
On Friday, March 2nd, the San Francisco Basque Educational Organization opens the Spring 2012 Basque Film Series with a special screening of the documentary The Last Link, which will be introduced by the film’s Executive Producer Tim Kahn, who will also discuss what has transpired since the film’s premiere in 2003. After the screening, Marcia Barinaga will give a presentation on the Barinaga Ranch, located in Marin County, and its system of raising sheep in a sustainable & environmentally friendly way and its use of ancient shepherding and cheese making traditions from her Basque family and ancestors. To see the trailer of the film please check www.BasqueEd.org.
The BEO will host a meet and greet reception before the screening. To attend, please RSVP to Nicole Sorhondo at 415-285-0748 or at Info@BasqueEd.org by February 27th.
Tender, tragic, and hopeful, The Last Link is a visual elegant documentary exploring the rapidly shrinking world of family-based agriculture in the United States. Narrated by Willie Nelson, The Last Link offers up a cast of delightful and inspirational characters who join to tell the story of Basque and Bearnais immigration to the United States, the struggles of the past, and what’s at stake for the future.
The Last Link shows the shepherds and their descendants as a proud and passionate people, whose spiritual and physical vitality is shaped by their connection to the mountains, regardless of whether they are the French Pyrénées or Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. Tempered by extremes of weather and demands of self-reliance, they remain linked to an Old World Culture that offers a glimpse into the past where one can feel time, marked by ever-changing patterns of seasonal cycles. Interviews with immigrants and their descendants in Wyoming and California graphically illustrate the role of community in sustaining a transplanted identity within a larger Western American culture.
Traveling with Pete Camino, The Last Link examines the decline of this agricultural lifestyle as it becomes less profitable in a world of high technology and more mechanized practices. A look at both the Old and New Worlds reveals this as a threat to the maintenance of a collective knowledge of values and life-lessons acquired through an intimate connection with the land.
