September 24, 2015–The talent is thoroughly thoroughbred as the first of a blockbuster line-up of guests is announced for the EQUUS Magazine Directors Panels to be featured daily during the third annual EQUUS Film Festival, November 20-21 at the home of the Tribeca Film Festival – the historic Village East Cinema — in Manhattan, New York.
EQUUS Magazine Directors Panels will bring filmgoers up close and personal with today’s storytellers of the horse world as EQUUS Film Festival screens over 100 documentaries, films, music videos, commercials and instructional series, plus national and world premieres, leading up to the Saturday night equi-equivalent of the Oscars: the Winnie Awards.
EQUUS Magazine guest panelists and speakers will include: Filmmaker Mario Dirkx from The Netherlands, whose ‘Horses of Kings, Thief of Hearts’ on the history of the Cartusian, PRE Andalusian and Spanish horses makes its world premiere at EQUUS Film Festival.
Upstate New York ABC-TV show host Susan Kayne of Real Horse Rescues will join Richard ‘Kudo’ Couto, lead investigator and founder of Animal Recovery Mission, inspired by Couto’s real-life rescue of Freedom’s Flight, a former racehorse and descendant of Triple Crown champion, Secretariat, found tied to a tree and next in line to be butchered at an illegal slaughter farm in Florida.
Allan J. Hamilton, MD, the Harvard-trained ‘brain surgeon who listens to horses’ and author of the 2012 Gold Nautilus Award for his book, Zen Mind, Zen Horse. Dr. Hamilton is professor of neurosurgery at University of Arizona, a medical script consultant for the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy and raises Lipizzans on a small ranch outside of Tucson, Arizona.
London-based Thomas Lloyd of Dreamtime Film, who chronicled his nine-month journey of a lifetime in 1995 across the UK with “a hand-cranked clockwork Russian super 8mm camera and pair of Fells ponies, Hades Hill Oscar and Hades Hill Fenella.”
Broadcast journalist Katia Louise, founder and president of the Wild for Life Foundation and international award-winning director and screenwriter of ‘Saving America’s Horses: A Nation Betrayed.’
German filmmaker Miriam Thiel, who left her job as an international airline stewardess to study script writing under Hark Bohm at the Hamburg Media School, and whose teen coming-of-age film, ‘Talking to Golden Arrow’ makes its American premiere at EQUUS Film Festival.
About EQUUS Film Festival
As home to the storytellers of the horse world, the EQUUS Film Festival, November 20-22 at the Village East Cinema (home to the Tribeca Film Festival) is the first event of its kind presenting equestrian-themed film, fine art and authors, EQUUS Magazine Directors Panels and a pop-up art and literary gallery, Li’l Herc’s Kids Fest sponsored by Suzanne Kopp-Moskow with free Saturday morning family films and fun events, Sunday tours of New York’s Central Park Carriage Horses Stables, and Manhattan Saddlery-sponsored Thursday evening VIP Party and Sunday holiday shopping hours. Founded in 2013 as the world’s premier showcase for domestic and international feature films, documentaries and shorts, this year’s EQUUS Film Festival will again present more than 100 selections and has doubled its Winnie Awards categories to 28, including Equestrian Art Film, Commercial, Director, Documentary, International, Music Video, Series, People’s Choice and Best of Festival. Find tickets and learn more about special activities at www.equusfilmfestival.net and join its nearly 10,000 Facebook fans on www.facebook.com/EquusFilmFestivalNYC.
