The singer, who has lived in the pampas for 20 years, welcomed the director Jean-François Pignon, mad about dressage.
In the documentary 40 days, 4 criollos and silence, of which he is the director, the trainer of horses in freedom Jean-François Pignon tries to tame with patience and humility wild horses in the Argentine pampas, at the singer Florent Pagny. “The goal of this adventure was to meet wild horses and learn their language without artifice, without lasso. In this initiatory journey, I questioned my 40 years of method”, explained to the press Jean-François Pignon, who had participated in the film in 2007 Dance with him by Valérie Guignabodet with Mathilde Seigner and Sami Frey.
On this hostile land, strewn with brambles and cacti, animals never have contact with humans. The trainer who provides courses around the world was for the first time confronted with horses sometimes “explosives“: two males and two females that he baptizes Hombre, Bébé, Élue and La Meneuse. “There are different ways to train a horse: you can strip it, tame it, constrain it, like in the rodeo. In Argentina, some gauchos tie the horse to a stake for several hours, several days, until it yields, he details. Some break their necks, others lower their backs, in the end, the horse, morally and physically exhausted, submits to the situation. He will tolerate being ridden, we will get an obedient but rarely complicit horse!”
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The film, shot in breathtaking landscapes, also recounts the birth of a friendship with Florent Pagny, who for twenty years has lived in contact with the horses on his estate, without riding them. Horses are used as mounts for the gauchos for working cattle. “I think your delirium, it’s not doable. It is a story of resistance. You are not a horse. You can’t run behind all the time. I’ll put an Argos beacon on you! », jokes the singer at the beginning of the film.
Jean-François Pignon takes up this challenge with his dressage method, dealing with the character of the horses in just forty days, silently and gently. In the evening, it’s time for the debriefing around a table with Florent Pagny and his Argentinian wife Azucena Caamaño. “I learned from my meeting with Jean-François that with horses you have to be patient”, told AFP Florent Pagny, who also gives voice in the film by singing Love life. “The key to the approach with the horse is indifference. It fascinated me to see that the animal was embarrassed by the insistent gaze and that he didn’t really like being touched.“, he noted.
For him, Jean-François Pignon, “well known in Argentina», is changing the training methods. “There is a new generation of gauchos who consider that it is necessary to stop tying horses, submitting them, mistreating them because you can achieve the same result by being cooler“. His reflection after this lesson: “many men wake up in the morning thinking “I’d love to go for a ride”. But very few horses see the light of day waking up thinking “I wish someone would ride on my back today!”“.
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