ABSTRACT
Horses have long been living in contact with humans, who have established a wide variety of relationships with them according to contextual and cultural circumstances. Many films have depicted human-horse bonds, some of which may be based on mutual respect but also on asymmetries of power both in reality and in fiction. This chapter focuses on The Silver Brumby, which tells the story of a wild brumby stallion living in the Australian mountains and coping both with horse and human rivals. The chapter will investigate how the film represents the relationships between humans, animals and landscapes. The combination of film analysis and animal studies will be used to examine and question the film’s narrative devices used to present the story of the horse protagonist, who constantly fights to preserve his role in the herd, his spaces and his freedom. I argue that The Silver Brumby proposes a romanticised representation of the problematic presence and management of brumbies in Australia. Indeed, the brumby population – an alien species to Australia – has been growing, thus causing damage to the environment. Even though some argue for their preservation, the Australian government has engaged in several operations to keep their number under control. Analysing the film by referring to this situation enables reflection on the notion of landscape as a category through which humans organise specific visions of nature and on whether and how horses are allowed to occupy these frames.
