In Italian
Horizon: An American Saga. In Utah on the trail of Kevin Costner to discover the locations where the first two movies of the saga were filmed. It tells the real story of the American Frontier and the reasons that pushed him – once again – to pay tribute and do justice to the Native Cultures and all those men and women who lost their lives searching for a “promised land”.
Horizon: An American Saga. In Utah with Kevin Costner
“Thirteen years later, their homes destroyed, their buffalo gone,
the last band of free Sioux submitted to white authority at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
The great horse culture of the plains was gone, and the American frontier was soon to pass into history.”
(Dances with Wolves, finale)
Telling the (real) story of The American Frontier, starting from the last stages of the Civil War and then continuing with the arrival of the white man in the wild territories of the West USA, is now for several years one of the focal points of my studies, of my travels and my narration of the Great American West. And you will find a lot about this topic among the pages of this blog.
Because it is precisely in these states – Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and Utah – that these events took place. And it is right that the attention of travelers is focused not only on the incredible natural wonders of these areas, but also on the historical events that have inevitably redefined the contours.
Pursuing the dream of many pioneers to reach the Pacific coast, gold diggers, scouts, fur hunters, US Army soldiers, adventures and outlaws who defined the paths of some of the most popular trails, illegally occupied these lands, previously for absolute use and consumptions and owned by Native Cultures.
The result was a no-holds-barred real war. A conflict that in more than 20 years caused the almost total extinction of ancient and valiant Native populations, such as the Lakota and Dakota Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Shoshone and Arapaho, the Apache, the Blackfeet, the Nez Perce, the Shoshone Paiute and the Shoshone-Bannoc, and many more.
And it was also thanks to Kevin Costenr and his growing interest towards the Lakota – after filming Dances with the Wolves in South Dakota – that I got to explore and visit their lands and listen to their stories. I wrote about it here.
Visit Deadwood, South Dakota: Tatanka, Story of the Bison! Kevin Costner’s Museum donated to the Lakota after “Dances with the Wolves”
A necessary introduction to understand how important is the work that Kevin Costner has been carrying out for several years by now, not only in the terms of colossal movies and tv series. I mean his commitment to tell with honesty and deep respect both towards the Native cultures and towards all those men and women who lost their lives searching for a “promised land”, the true and dramatic epic of The West and the American Frontier, and everything that came out of it.
Returning, through his productions, a historical reality largely altered by the literature and the filmography of the first half of the Nineties.
Horizon: An American Saga. In Utah with Kevin Costner. Fort Laramie, WY
Horizon: An American Saga has the complicated task – Costner himself said it in more than an interview – to tell one of the most crucial periods of the history and the evolution of the American society.
Trying to give a more honest and real version of what was the bloody, violent and often dramatic Conquest of the West. Celebrated in the past with no little rhetoric and false historical reconstruction from the filmography of the Fifties and Sixties that made white men the spotless heroes and the Native populations – guilty only of defending their own lands and their own lifestyle from the aggressors – the villains par excellence, the so-called “hostiles” to be destroyed without mercy.
Costner promises us a crude narration and more faithful to the historical reality, made of men and women with all their lead of aspirations and miseries. Cowboys, cowgirls, pioneers, mountain man, scouts, gamblers, prostitutes, soldiers and Native American, of course.
Traces of the Oregon Trail
A story in 4 chapters developing over 15 years, form the Civil War to the arrival of the Frontier and the consequent Indian Wars. The states on the background of these events are those of the Great American West, mainly Wyoming and Montana.
In addition to Kevin Costner – director, scriptwriter and main character – the cast includes Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Will Patton, Tatanka Means, Owen Crow Shoe and Ella Hunt.
A colossal production. With a total budget of 100 million dollars that required Costner a major economic effort. He decided to personally finance much of the saga that he had begun to write in 1988 and whose realization was already blocked by the Studios twice.
All that remains is to wait for the screening of the first movie – in the Italian cinemas in July – to finally enjoy the first part of the saga, to support his incredible project and witness something epic.
Find down here the original trailer of the saga.
“The state of Utah, with its intrinsic beauty, is the perfect backdrop for the story of ‘Horizon’
and can be said to be its own character in our story,”
(Kevin Costner)
The filming of the first two chapters of Horizon: An American Saga, set in the fictional film between Montana and Wyoming, took place in the spectacular scenery South Central Utah, in Southwest USA.
From vast deserts to the huge red rocks, these landscapes have provided – and will keep providing for the last two episodes planned – the perfect canvas for the unfolding of the epic of Horizon.
Horizon: An American Saga, the locations of the movie in Utah, Moab
The area of Moab was largely the background for the first chapter, followed by some scenes shot at Greater Zion.
While for the second and the third episodes the Washington Country has been selected. From St. George to the Snow Canyon State Park, as far as the nearby Shivwits band of the Paiute Indian Reservation. Locations that offered different landscapes and characters, intense and wonderful, contributing to the visual and emotional richness of the movie.
Many locals were hired as extras and crew members. Native Paiute themselves were involved in the filming, while the students at the Utah tech University were recruited as interns and assistants.
If you can travel to these areas of the Southwest in Spring and Autumn, you might be lucky enough to find yourselves on the set of the third chapter. I hope to return in the fall as well so that I can tell and write even more about this incredible saga.
Horizon: An American Saga, Snow Canyon – Greater Zion Convention and Tourism Office Ph. Credits
Costner decided to build new Studios directly on site. Considering the difficulties encountered in finding suitable locations for interior scenes in the processing of the first two chapters and the third one, currently in production.
The Territory Studios will be located outside Zion National Park and they will develop over 155,000 square meters of space where offices, warehouses for the realization of the interiors and even a themed restaurant will be realized.
The first two chapters of Horizon: An American Saga will arrive in the Italian cinemas respectively on July 4th and August 15th, distributed by Warner Bros Italia.
For the third one, which is being filmed these months, we will have to wait until 2025.
Find here the official Italian trailer of the first chapter.
Article written for Visit Utah and Greater Zion – Press Conference IPW 2024, Los Angeles
Traveling to the United States
