{"id":21335,"date":"2018-02-06T11:31:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T18:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=21335"},"modified":"2018-02-06T11:31:17","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T18:31:17","slug":"d-c-filmmaker-documents-legendary-montana-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/02\/d-c-filmmaker-documents-legendary-montana-roundup\/","title":{"rendered":"D.C. filmmaker documents legendary Montana roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Horse\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy Brian Liu<\/p>

Brian Liu spent several years riding the annual cattle roundup in the Highwood Mountains with a team of die-hard cowboys. While he\u2019d never ridden a horse, the cowboys showed him the ropes, and his new documentary pays tribute to their vanishing lifestyle.<\/p><\/div>\n

A filmmaker from Washington, D.C., and a group of Montana cowboys who still ride the range may not have much in common.\u00a0But give them a few weeks together rounding up cattle in the Highwood Mountains and, as this story goes, they\u2019ll form lasting bonds.<\/p>\n

Film director Brian Liu is in the final stages of producing his new documentary, \u201cOnly Roundup Remains<\/a>,\u201d which he filmed over the course of several years riding the Highwood cattle roundup east of Great Falls.<\/p>\n

Along the way, he got his footage and made some unlikely friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never ridden a horse before I went out,\u201d Liu said\u00a0on Monday. \u201cI was humble about it and very upfront. I didn\u2019t try to bullshit anyone. I told them if they gave me a quick lesson, I\u2019d stay out of their way. They gave me a 30-second lesson and led me around the pen like a toddler on a pony, then sent me off into the Highwoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liu, a longtime designer and photojournalist from D.C. whose credits include the New York Times and Rolling Stone, was admittedly green when he arrived in Montana. His filmmaking partner, Andrew Labens, had family in the state and recommended the legendary roundup as a possible documentary.<\/p>\n

Liu agreed to scout it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea what I was getting myself into,\u201d he said. \u201cMe and Andrew were just setting out to see what would happen and maybe make a short. We ended up finishing that roundup and thought we had some pretty good footage, but we didn\u2019t get around to it for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following year, as Labens went to work on a hunting show in Cody, Wyo., Liu\u2019s phone began filling with text messages. It was the Highwood cowboys asking when he planned to come back out for another ride.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Liu was skeptical, saying he was dead weight, required two additional horses and, by the way, had made other plans. None of the cowboys asked where the film was in production. As it turns out, they simply liked Liu\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a filmmaker and someone who\u2019s into culture, I really was flattered by that, so I flew back out and continued shooting,\u201d Liu said. \u201cWe were pretty pleased with the way everything looked, and we realized we might have a feature, which is really difficult to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The Highwood roundup is something of legend, given that it\u2019s been taking place each year since 1912. While its future remains uncertain, it still enjoys the dedication of eight men who set off each fall to gather several thousand cattle from 50,000 acres over the course of a week.<\/p>\n

For the past several years, Liu has taken a horse-high seat to\u00a0film the action<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody said, when they heard a film director was coming out from D.C., they didn\u2019t expect a long-haired Asian guy wearing camo pants and a T-shirt,\u201d Liu said. \u201cThey expected someone in a tie, and they weren\u2019t expecting me. They didn\u2019t think that a city guy could hang in there and drink with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liu described the documentary as a rare and intimate view into a disappearing way of life. Led by a proud generation of ranching families, the work takes place today just as it did in 1912.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur film is very much about a way of life, but it\u2019s also a story about getting older, in general,\u201d Liu said. \u201cThese old, tough guys are legends and you only heard stories about them. But to actually see them hanging in there at the age of 75, still chasing cows and still living the life, I just wanted to do justice to that life and these guys were so gracious to open up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the footage complete and the editing done, Liu and Labens are working to secure the music licensing and are planning a Kickstarter campaign to fund it. The soundtrack includes Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott doing Bob Dylan, along with Bill Callahan and Loudon Wainwright III.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also busy applying to various film festivals, including next year\u2019s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula. Their hope is to tour the film across Montana, showing it in rural towns along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing that remains of that Old World tradition where a cowboy is just a cowboy is the roundup,\u201d said Liu. \u201cPeople usually make documentaries about a subject they\u2019re obsessed with. But I\u2019m making this one to honor the life and the guys \u2014 their grandfathers and fathers before them who did this. Now their children and great-grandchildren can look at it see what their family did.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on\u00a0Missoula Current<\/a>, an independent online newspaper, of which\u00a0Martin Kidston is the founding editor.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A filmmaker from Washington, D.C., and a group of Montana cowboys who still ride the range may not have much in common.\u00a0But give them a few weeks together rounding up cattle in the Highwood Mountains and, as this story goes, they\u2019ll form lasting bonds. Film director Brian Liu is in the final stages of producing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":21336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[6732,6733,713],"class_list":["post-21335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-brian-liu","tag-highwood-mountains","tag-roundup","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21338,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21335\/revisions\/21338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}