Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt were filling up the tank in their car at the only petrol station that remains in Hanksville, a small town in the south of Utah, when they saw a buffalo head in the back of an abandoned van. One of the last free-roaming herds of American bison live in the Henry Mountains and the surrounding deserts in Utah. Every year, special licenses are issued to hunt the animals and help reduce the excess population. Lynch and Schmitt recorded hunting expeditions for five years. However, The Last Buffalo Hunt is not a documentary on buffalo hunt but a film of cowboys, history, and landscape. A tribute to one of the last natural paradises in America and a statement against its loss.
Lee Anne Schmitt. She studied at Northwestern University, in Evanston, and the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where she now teaches filmmaking (production, scriptwriting, and narrative) in the Film Directing Programme. A versatile multidisciplinary artist whose practice extends from film and performance to photography and writing, she creates evocative, deeply felt works that consider everyday elements of American life as cultural ritual. Exploring the juncture between fiction and reality, she is most at ease with essay films.
Filmography
The Last Buffalo Hunt (2010)
Bowers Cave (2009)
California Company Town (2008)
The Wash (2005)
Awake and Sing (2003)
Nightingale (2002)
Las Vegas (2000)
Lee Lynch. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He is a documentary maker, a conceptual artist, and a teacher at the Echo Park Film Center, a Los Angeles-based media arts centre. His films have screened at a lot of international film festivals. Before The Last Buffalo Hunt, he had worked with Lee Anne Schmitt in The Wash (2005).
Filmography
The Urban Leprechaun (1998)
The Bee Hive (2000)
Ovid´s Pomona (2002)
The Wash (2005)
Transposition of the Great Vessels (2005)
The Tin Woodman´s Home Movie #2 (2009)
Bower´s Cave (2009)
The Last Buffalo Hunt (2010)
Murder of Hi Good (2011)