A real human touch

Written By Sil Azevedo

Five years ago director Kate Beecroft was driving around the country with her director of photography in search of a good story to film, "trying to find faces, stories, maybe something we could use for a short film or b-roll for a music video." She didn't dream she would find a fascinating character in an exotic setting where she would spend several years creating her first feature film. And what a film it is, a docu-fiction based on the real lives of Tabatha Zamiga and her daughter Porshia.

Tabatha is a young widow, with punk-goth-cowgirl looks and vibes, raising her children in her ranch in South Dakota, along with several other teens who, for one reason or another, were abandoned by their parents. Tabatha is a master horse trainer, and Porshia is a gifted rider. They sell horses at shows and on TikTok.

Beecroft lived with the Zamigas for three years and spent time teaching them to act so that the authenticity of their fascinating story could come through on film. The compelling hybrid brings to mind Nomadland. Even more authentic, perhaps, because these amateurs are reliving their own story. I was mesmerized and believe this film deserves an academy nomination. The viewers at Sundance 2025 seem to agree. The film received the NEXT audience award at the 2025 festival.

 
 
Sil Azevedo

I was seven years old when I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 133. It was Christmas of 1973. Since then, I have always seen the world through the lens. It is my way of making sense, of visually dealing with paradoxes and complexities of life. In high school I was the lab rat and spent each free minute at the feet of the Beseler enlarger, hypnotized by its magical light. Still today I enjoy low light ambiences. They say photographers do it in the dark. I am living proof - ha! Architecture school followed as photography was not a career option in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The combination of art, composition, light, form and space, coupled with the demands of physics found in Architecture have their parallel in photography. The concepts are transferable. As I started my career in Architecture, I soon found that I was more excited about the concept and the print than the actual building. Fantasy is my reality. I kept shooting, learning and apprenticing with some incredible artists. In time, as life took its turns, my original passion for photography became my full time profession. It has been almost 20 years since I walked into the pro shop and charged the Hasselblad and the studio lights to my credit card. As he saw the bill and my naive optimism, even the salesman exclaimed, "you're going to have to sell a lot of pictures..." I did and still do, but what drives me is not that. It is the unstoppable desire to understand and to relate. To me, that is photography.

http://silazevedo.com
Next

The Brutal Beauty of Mother Lode