Author Archives: Gretchen Lida

The day the author Harper Lee died my grandmother and I talked about race. We were on the phone, she in her house in Colorado, me in my apartment in...

Horse lovers young and old love to fantasize about equine-related travel. For me, I have daydreamed for decades about galloping across a beach on a horse with a big stride,...

I am isolating at a friend’s farm for a few days, and storms rolled in over her back pasture for the past two nights.  The night before last, the thunder...

Many of us became horse crazy because of our mothers, aunts, grandmothers, or another female figure who swept in and encouraged us into a saddle. They threw us up on...

Horse lovers tend to be good storytellers. From recounting our first nasty fall to explaining exactly what the horse got into that they were not supposed to, being able to...

To pass time in self-isolation during the COVID-19 crisis, I cleaned my favorite bridle. It belonged to the horse I knew the longest, the one that changed my life. Carabela...

As the days of the pandemic trickle forward like water from a kinked hose, many people are feeling more emotions in 24 hours than they usually do in a month....

The streets have emptied, businesses have closed, and many of the significant spring horse events we wait for all year have been canceled or postponed. COVID-19 may have slowed us...

Every December, I sign up for the best PPO (preferred provider organization) insurance plan I can afford because if I get chucked off a horse and need to go to...

A good redemption narrative isn't the kind with tidy edges. It is the type of film that shows us breathtaking highs and crippling lows. The kind that has the courage...

It might be mud season outside, but spring has already arrived at EQUUS Film Channel. With 40 new films added this month—on therapeutic riding, racing, rescue, horse cultures big and...

I was raised Catholic. My father would put on his Sunday best and pull my brother and me out of bed for 8 am Mass. I was never a model...

Filmmakers and photographers alike know the difficulties of capturing horses on film. Horses are always moving, the wrong angle makes them look like giraffes, and bad lighting in indoor arenas...

I have lived in the Great Lakes region of the United States for five years now. I traded my Colorado clay-covered cowboy boots for the paddock variety. The wind blowing...

At first, Sybil H Mair’s short film The Equestrian seems simple: a young man seeks the lost affection of an emotionally absent father through some great achievement. Yet, as this...

One of the most striking scenes in Ceolchuairt Mongolia doesn’t include a fiddle. Instead, the camera focuses on a little sorrel horse, as wild and fierce as the Mongolian winter....

I was in one of the Wrigley Media Group theaters at the EQUUS Film and Arts Festival over the weekend, watching a set of shorts when from somewhere in the...

Shot over 14 days in April and August of 2018, Tails of Iceland delicately weaves the story of how Icelanders and their unique, multi-gaited horses have shaped the culture of the island....

The Equus Film Festival is best defined by passion. Whether a film is about reining, racing, or hunting for the origins of America's wild horses, dedication, love, devotion, and perhaps...

The bags are packed. The list of the must-sees is made. The horsehair has been vacuumed out of car’s floor mats. Today is the first day of the 2019 EQUUS...