Wells’ third doc film can be watched online

By Jessica Coleman

Contributing Writer

    Donna Wells spent her childhood and teen years in Edna before heading off to college and majoring in journalism before discovering a love for theatre.

    Today, she lives in New Mexico, and spends her time making documentary films. Her documentary HorseKeeper, is currently showing at the Santa Fe Film Festival – the third festival it has been featured in.

    HorseKeeper is Wells’ third film, and follows Jackie Fleming, a woman who runs a 1400-acre wild horse sanctuary in New Mexico that is home to 40 wild mustangs. Fleming previously appeared in Wells’ first documentary, She Had Some Horses, and was “just so interesting,” that Wells felt she deserved her own documentary.

    “She’s something of a renaissance woman,” said Wells. “She’s written three nonfiction books that are stories of these horses. She’s written two novels that have a lot of history in them, because she is a history buff. The ruts from the old Santa Fe trail run through her property. She is also a landscape painter.”

    All three of Wells’ films are horse related, something she would never have predicted when she was growing up.

    “I am an animal lover but I came to horses later in life,” she said. “I started riding in 1999. I signed myself for this horse packing trip up in the Tetons. That meant I had to trail ride. So, I took trail riding lessons and I went on that trail ride, and when I came back I kept taking lessons.”

    She went on to show quarter horses, and now owns a horse that she has had since 2002.

    “I just really loved horses,” she said.

    Wells’ first two documentaries are available for viewing online.

    2011’s She Had Some Horses is about the relationship between women and horses, and introduces the viewer to two women who run horse sancutaries, two equine photographers and one animal communicator and equine body worker.

    In 2016, Wells unveiled Horse Shelter Diaries, documents the “most important 100 days in these horses’ lives” during which The Horse Shelter in Santa Fe New Mexico takes 100 days to train and adopt out rescued horses that had previously never been saddled.     HorseKeeper is available at the Santa Fe Film Festival’s Virtual Event until Feb 21 at https://xerb.tv/channel/shorts/virtual-events.