The Next Picture Show

Anyone who’s visited Manhattan has seen those horse-drawn carriage rides tourists take around the city. Filmmaker Donny Moss says he walked by them for years, and while he always felt there was something wrong with them, he tended to turn his head, as if not seeing them would make them go away.

“For 20 years I thought, ‘Something doesn’t look right here,’ but I kept walking,” he says. “Then in 2006, a car crashed into the side of a horse and New Yorkers started protesting in the streets. I just thought, ‘There’s a story here about what’s happening in front of our eyes, but also behind the scenes, that needs to be told.’”

That story is told in Blinders, a 52-minute documentary directed by Mr. Moss that will be screened June 6 at the New Jersey Film Festival in Scott Hall on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Mr. Moss will appear at the screening to discuss the film and take questions from the audience.

He says his film has a strong point of view - that horse-drawn carriage rides have no place in modern New York City and should be banned. Through interviews with representatives of PETA, the Humane Society and other animal-rights groups and veterinarians, he concludes that horses in New York City live in quarters that are too confining, that their hooves aren’t designed for so much street trotting, and that accidents involving the carriages injure horses and people.

While pointing out that people in the carriage industry will say that the horses get eight months of vacation away from the city each year, Mr. Moss says, “The bottom line is horses should be able to move freely, graze (and) socialize with other animals. They’re herd animals and (they should be allowed) to do the things that come naturally to them at least a little bit every day.”

Mr. Moss says people from the industry wouldn’t talk with him for his movie. He did interview a carriage rider, but owners of the companies and veterinarians hired by the industry to do studies turned down his requests for interviews.

“I did make every effort possible for fair balance,” he says. “But again, I do have a strong point of view and that is that the problems can’t be fixed.” A bill has been introduced to ban the carriage rides, but it has little hope of passing. A suggested alternative has been to have antique car rides replace the horses, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has supported the carriage rides, calling it a tradition that tourists enjoy.

A recent story on the Crain’s Web site quotes a statement from the Horse & Carriage Association of New York, calling the film “a cheap, manipulative, overly edited piece of PETA propaganda” and describes Mr. Moss as a “notorious animal extremist.” Mr. Moss says he made the film independently with his own money (along with a small contribution from a personal acquaintance), but that PETA is helping to promote the film. He adds that he wasn’t an animal activitist prior to making Blinders, but made donations to PETA and Farm Sanctuary since starting the filmmaking process.

Blinders is the first film made by Mr. Moss, who is 36. He says he learned how to make a movie as he went, taking editing classes at the Apple Store and asking the people who sold him his camera about videography. His movie has been seen at a few festivals and won best film in the Point of View category at the International Wildlife Film Festival.

“I didn’t set out to make a 52-minute documentary film,” he says. “I originally thought I would do something small for YouTube. But one expert witness led to another and one accident witness led to another. It could have been three hours.”

Blinders will be shown at Scott Hall along with two short films, Scenes Missing and The Stoop, and the Promise of New York, a feature about three unlikely candidates who enter the campaign to become mayor of New York. The program starts at 7 p.m. For information and directions, call (732) 932-8482 or log onto www.njfilmfest.com