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The
documentary The Last Link captures the rich and dramatic story of the Basque and Béarnais shepherding cultures. For over
5,000 years, shepherding has been a way of life in Europe's Pyrénées mountains. Basque emigrants brought this culture to the American West in the early 20th Century. Less than a hundred years later, it is in danger of being absorbed into mainstream culture, both in
Europe and the United States.
The Last Link shows the shepherds and their descendants as a proud and passionate people, whose spiritual and physical vitality is shaped by their connection to the mountains, regardless of whether they are
in the Pyrénées or Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. Tempered by extremes of weather and demands of self-reliance, they remain linked to an Old World Culture that offers a glimpse into the past where one can feel time, marked by ever-changing patterns of seasonal cycles. Interviews with immigrants and their descendants in Wyoming and California graphically illustrate the role of community in sustaining a transplanted identity within a larger Western American culture.
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