Wild Horses of Newbury

This weekend I was trying to describe this video to a friend. How this footage will break your heart and warm it also. Tis an old video, but still poignant to me.

 Synopsis
 When a road tries to destroy ancient forests, two black horses appear
 to stop the chainsaws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYAqkHI4qq4


'The Wild Horses of Newbury' was shot by me, Mark Carroll, very early on a single morning in February 1996 at the building site of the Newbury Bypass. (UK) This controversial road was to cut through some beautiful, ancient English countryside and had met with massive and radical direct action protests, hence the number of security guards. The whole episode only lasted a few minutes.. nothing was staged. The security guards and police had circled two very old Oak trees and were preparing to chop them down , when two scruffy, seemingly wild horses appeared and began to interfere with the felling. One of the horses even confronted one of the police horses.....
It was a very magical moment.

More work by Mark Carroll;
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mark-Ca...


 Inspiration
 There was no inspiration for the film, apart from the moment itself. I
 was at Newbury, filming the protests and the evictions on a Hi8
 Camcorder. Very early one February morning, I found myself in a field
 with over 500 security guards and police, they had surrounded a small
 copse and a couple of huge, old oak trees and were preparing to chop
 them down. They had successfully outwitted the protesters. In the
 chaos accompanying the operation, some hedges and fences had been
 destroyed and these two horses were roaming virtually free. As the
 chainsaws started, they didn't run away as you'd expect, but towards
 the felling.. I just grabbed the camcorder and started filming,
 nothing was staged, the whole episode only lasted a few minutes, but
 had quite a profound effect on everyone there. Even the police were
 dumbfounded, especially by the 'confrontation' between the 'wild'
 horse and the police horse.