Bozeman Magazine

Loose Horses takes an unbiased look at the American loose horse culture. It is the tale of a triad of iconic characters: the horse owners who sell their horse at the auction, the horse buyer who looks to find re-sale options, and the meat buyer who is taking the blame for an industry he didn’t create. The film places the viewer inside the auction house, revealing the perspective of the horses bound by human politics.

The US is the fourth largest supplier of horsemeat in the world, even though American slaughterhouses were shut down in 2007. As a result, every year, about 160,000 domestic horses are shipped thousands of miles to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico for sale in European and other foreign markets. An immersive, dispassionate chronicle, Loose Horsescaptures the market through the eyes of unwanted horse #1052, at one of the largest auctions in the US. Amongst the stark, dusty pens of the auction, we come to know a horse destined for human consumption and a Montana cowboy named Buzz who serves as our guide. Loose Horses captures the genuine grit of the market subculture and the complicated human-equine connection in the American West. 

Loose Horses premiered at the Ethnografilm Festival in Paris, France in April, 2017 and has screened at the Northwest Film Festival in Portland, OR and the Shane Lalani Center in Livingston, MT. 

Kathy Kasic is an internationally published biologist and holds an M.S. in Biology and an M.F.A in Science and Natural History Filmmaking.  She is both a producer and camerawoman with over 12 years of experience and is a faculty member in the School of Film and Photography at Montana State University. Her film work has been featured on National Geographic, BBC, PBS, History Channel, CBS and Discovery Channel and has received accolades at numerous film festivals. Producer Barb Marshall lives in Clyde Park, MT, has an Anthropology degree from the University of Colorado and is also a Registered Nurse. Her interest in the film went beyond horses to look at how humans make difficult decisions and how they talk about their ambivalence regarding those choices.