Katrina Taylor ’04 is the editor and producer of a documentary titled “Boone,” which chronicles the trials and tribulations of three young farmers working on a small goat farm in Southern Oregon.
During the nine-day event in Austin, Texas, “Boone” has three scheduled screenings as part of the festival’s Visions section. The film’s first showing is slated for Saturday, March 12. View the trailer here.
The documentary, directed by Christopher LaMarca, is billed as a sensory and unsentimental peek behind the veil of the Utopian dream of farming. The film centers around three young goat farmers as they transition with the seasons and come to terms with the hardships of living close to the land, noted Taylor.
“This film is an immersive and visceral portrait on the struggle and sacrifice of farming,” said the School of Communications graduate. “We chose not to include interviews or take a strict advocacy stance and I think it really allows a viewer to drop into a world many of us have become disconnected from. I hope that people leave the theater with a new understanding of the amount of work, risk and heart it takes to live in direct relationship to the natural world.”
Considering the film’s subject matter, Taylor believes South By Southwest, and particularly the city of Austin, is an ideal venue for “Boone’s” premiere. “The festival has a long history of supporting up-and-coming artists and I think the city’s vibrant food and farming community will resonate with the sensory nature of the film,” she said.
For Taylor, the world premiere is the culmination of several years of hard work and the continuation of several exciting weeks. She recently attended the True/False Film Fest, which premiered “The Pearl,” another film she worked on. Taylor served as an assistant editor on the project, which follows a group of trans women in rural Washington state as they go through significant gender changes.
“Documentary filmmaking requires an enormous amount of multitasking and keeping everything constantly on track was a challenge,” she said. “Oh, and also funding. Support independent filmmakers!”
In addition to “Boone” and “The Pearl,” Taylor has served in several other roles during her dozen years working in the field of documentary film production and distribution. She was an assistant editor with the Academy Award-winning “The Empowerment Project,” and an associate producer for the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership. Additionally, she acted as director of acquisitions for Collective Eye, spearheading the acquisitions, marketing and digital delivery of documentary films to the educational market.
In spring 2007, Taylor served as the filmmaker in residence for elondocs, a documentary film production program housed in the School of Communications.