Arts Council Sponsors Folklore Society Film Screening

LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana (February 2012)—.  The new documentary T-Galop: a Louisiana Horse Story will premier on Thursday, March 15th at 7:00 pm at the Central School Arts and Humanities Center in Lake Charles as part of the Louisiana Folklore Society’s Annual Meeting being hosted by McNeese State University.

T-Galop is the recent creation by Conni Castille who made I Always Do My Collars First (2007), and Raised on Rice and Gravy (2009), and King Crawfish (2010). The film screening is co-sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana.

Nick Spitzer, Amercian Routes, consulted with Castille on the film (Spitzer is also the invited Keynote Speaker for the Annual Meeting and will address the public on Friday, March 16, 7:00 p.m. at Stokes Auditorium). “T-Galop takes the audience deep into the horse play and work of French Louisiana,” says Spitzer, adding that “Cajun and Creole cowboy and cattle traditions are revealed from colonial times to present day swimming herds, bush tracks, zydeco cowboys, mounted Mardi Gras revelers, knightly “tournois”, workaday ranchers and famed jockeys. It’s all there.”

Indeed, in T-Galop, Creole cowboys, Cajun jockeys, Cotton Knights and Mardi Gras revelers reveal the long history and blend between Creoles and Cajuns and the horses they love. “This equine love affair began more than 250 years ago on the first ranches of South Louisiana where Creoles became some of American’s first cowboys,” explains Castille, the film’s writer and director. Not only essential to hard ranch work, horses were often the focus of French Louisiana’s renowned joie de vivre. “The Creole and Cajun idea of `passing a good time’ of course made its way into their horse culture, like the old bush track racing that birthed so many great jockeys, or the Mardi Gras horseback riders, or the leisurely Creole trail rides,” says Castille. T-Galop romps playfully across South Louisiana through professional sports to community rituals bearing witness to a modern horse culture that was born many centuries ago.

T-Galop: a Louisiana Horse Story will in Lake Charles at the Central School, 809 Kirby Street on Thursday, March 15th, at 7:00 pm. Admission is free. Donations will be accepted to benefit the Louisiana Folklore Society. For more information on the screening or the Folklore Society’s Annual Meeting, call (337) 277-5292, or e-mail connicastille@gmail.com. T-Galop was supported in part by grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Louisiana Entertainment, Louisiana Economic Development Association, and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism.