Cosmopolitan Review

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The Arabian Horses of Poland: Once Again the Wellspring for the Greatest Arabian Horses in the World Before you begin, I’d like to recommend that you watch this. It’s the trailer to the movie. And if you don’t – at the very least – get chills at the sight of that gorgeous galloping white horse, or the herd thundering down a leafy lane – then, maybe just watch it again. Or, watch one of these: “Piaff” or “Pride of Poland.”That’s what I did before my interview with the filmmakers. Over and over again. I’m not a horse person. I’ve never owned a horse. I’ve ridden one a few times. And by “ridden,” I mean I’ve white-knuckle-clutched the reins of a sleepy pony as it plods around a small ring. But these horses made me want to be a horse person, to live, breathe, ride, and be around these animals day and night. And once I learned about their history – I was hooked. Am hooked. “This is the strange, unexpected story of far-flung lands, coming together in war and in peace, and influencing one another through the living history, written on the backs of centuries of horses.” – "Path to Glory" film trailer Sophie Pegrum, Horsefly Films: The connection between the human and the horse is inherently interesting. Our culture and civilization has depended on them for centuries. That is the backbone of the [film’s] story: how the horse has been used by man primarily through war; how our relationship has changed but remained inherently the same. Now we’re not exchanging them in battle, we’re exchanging them on the show ground. They’re mythical. There’s an element of them which is beyond reality because they come to us lowly humans and say, here I am, let me carry you forth. When you sit on the back of a horse, you’re being imbued with the power of this animal that is carrying you forth as if you had wings. As human beings, we have killed, destroyed, worked to the bone horses throughout history. They have given that to us. We should appreciate that. The other part is this element of the horse coming from the desert, being in Poland, and now going back to the desert because the Middle East is coming to Poland to buy Arabian horses. There’s a lot about this film that’s very detailed for a niche market. But we wanted to make sure that we were also telling the larger story, which would appeal to anybody - the history, the struggles that these humans have gone through with these horses, and their triumph. It was [also] about the people that had the courage to protect these horses and to be crafty about it, hide the stud books from the Germans. That knowledge on paper for breeding is invaluable and precious. You can steal a horse, but if you don’t know how it was bred, it’s worth pretty much nothing. We built the film in a way that is a series of, [the Poles] overcome this and now this is what happens, and now they over come this, and this is what happens. Even the titles that we’ve used for each section of the film are based on that kind of battleground scenario.


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