A herd of cows managed to escape the slaughterhouse and took refuge in the woods of the Ligurian hinterland. A short film tells the story.
There are around seventy of them — untamed, intelligent, defiant in the face of a predetermined fate. This is the story of the herd of cows that in 2011 took refuge in the woods of Mele and Masone, in the Ligurian hinterland, escaping their destiny at the slaughterhouse. That flight, and the subsequent adaptation to the Ligurian woodland, inspired a short film — its title says it all: Vacche ribelli — which will be presented at the end of May in Genoa.
[vimeo url="https://vimeo.com/206698808″]
The story begins in the late 1990s, when a farm in Mele, in the hinterland of Genoa, receives European funding to keep a herd of seventy cows (and several bulls) of the Limousine breed living in the wild. The primary aim is to keep the land clear in order to prevent fires.
Then, following a judicial investigation, the European funding is frozen. The farm is unable to meet the maintenance costs and the herd passes into the care of the municipality of Mele. But the municipality is unable to sustain it either, and so the judiciary is forced to intervene directly.
An order is issued for the capture of the cows, which, once caught, are due to be taken to a slaughterhouse in Lombardy. But the judiciary has underestimated the skill and cunning of the animals — qualities forged by the wild character they have developed over years and years of free-ranging life. And so, from 2011 onwards, the cows have managed to go to ground, splitting into two groups and dividing up the territory between them.
The story of the herd gave rise to the short film Vacche ribelli, made by Paolo Rossi, a nature and wildlife photographer, Stefania Carbonara, a videomaker, and Alessandro Ghiggi, with the collaboration of Luca Serlenga. The short was funded through a crowdfunding campaign that exceeded the target sum of 1,400 euros. Filmed with the help of drones and hidden cameras, the rebel cows of the Ligurian woods continue their life in the wild, paying no heed to laws and orders. And we can only hope that for the rest of their lives the only things to find them are camera lenses, and never the traps of humankind.