ASHLAND is a feature length documentary about a diverse group of young people living on the plains of Eastern Montana. Their hopes and dreams for the future laid bare in a wild landscape full of history and mystery where the past still dances with the present. Supported by the Big Sky Film Grant, Film Independent and the Montana Film Office. Shot on Kodak S16mm.
In Post-Production
2025
"Here within this film, is a vision of the American West that is timeless and transcendent. We see people training horses and riding in horse drawn carriages and wagons. The faces of the children are real American faces, the kinds that Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange found during the Depression in the 1930s. But there is no depression here. Instead, these children fly above themselves with joy and happiness as only our ancestors could have known. The team behind Ashland has somehow connected these people with a past that has long been gone - that only now exists in our mythos as American people. But that’s the catch. It apparently hasn’t gone anywhere, for these filmmakers have captured that which we have all romanticized and fantasized about for generations. The American West as a place of unbridled freedom, where animals roam unabated, and people toil along grandiose vistas. This film is a revelation."
~ALLISON WHITMER
Montana State Film Commissioner