J Paul Johnson
Recently debuting at the 2024 Locarno International Film Festival, Alina Orlov’s short The Cavalry is an expressionistic, poetic examination of the horses called to duty from their rural origins to Israeli West Bank, where they serve in a police unit patrolling the conflict there. It’s not, by any means, a traditional documentary with lower-third chyrons, talking-heads interviews, and expository data informing and persuading; rather, it’s a more free-form depiction of the animals in their majesty and their captivity, using both verité and manipulated archival footage.
Settling for a time on a single horse, known only as “Number Seven,” The Cavalry unflinchingly depicts the harsh conditioning of the Israeli cavalry training program. Officers subject him to loud noises, violent abrasions, water dousing, and uncomfortable conditions—all to desensitize him and prepare him for his duty controlling public protests. Orlov’s film focuses both on horses’ sensitivity and beauty and their complex relationship with humans as they are put to work.
Alina Orlov is an artist, freelancer, and educator who works in multiple media including both film and sculpture. Educated at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she was inspired to create The Cavalry when visiting family in Israel and witnessed the multiple forms of oppression made manifest in the control of the horses that constituted their police force’s cavalry.
Orlov recently spoke with Film Obsessive publisher J Paul Johnson about its production. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Alina, for joining us at Film Obsessive today.
Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.
Thank you, Alina. Will you tell us in your own words a little bit about your film, The Cavalry?
Well, it’s always hard. Although it’s such a short, but it’s always difficult. But yes, it’s a semi-documentary hybrid film which started with documenting the police officers on horses while the protest of 2023 were happening in Israel against the government. And then you started to see—or I started to see—more and more of the presence of these, police officers, these beautiful horses. And then I started to go deeper and deeper and trying to understand. And that’s what this film is about these horses. How we use horses for these purposes. And in a way, there is the simple use of horses, and there is the conflict and everything that is also there, a metaphor.
Well, I’m intrigued by the subject in so many ways, but one of the things I’m just wondering is, what was it that drew your attention directly to the animals in the first place? I imagine this is a situation where there’s just so much strife going on, so much conflict going on. I understand the beauty of the horses, but do you have personal experience with them, or was there something that just magnetically drew you towards them as your subject?
I actually rode a horse only one time in my life. So I don’t have much to do with horses. I love dogs, I have dogs, but nothing specifically towards horses. But I do remember that moment where horses were just running towards us. And it’s not something unique also to this particular part of the world, this hue of horses. But I took a photo when they were all standing in a line, like these courses like standing with the police officers and how big they were. And that’s from this photo, the interest started. I remember coming back home to my partner and I’m like, Is there something there?
And then it started. So there’s nothing personal, but I do think that there is something of this beautiful animal, and then this is an animal that is crowd controlling. It’s like what will prevent maybe freedom of speech or will be there for you not to say something, and it’s a horse. It’s freedom. It’s all these things.
There are so many striking images in your film, but one of the most striking for me was an extreme wide shot of the entirety of the city, and just in a tiny sliver in the frame of the frame slightly off center is a horse engaged in exercise in the middle of that city. And you have, I think, a remarkable cinematic eye for taking moments like that and making them very expressive. Is it difficult to shoot horses as your subject, especially when I imagine you don’t have the same kind of control that a director of a fiction film, would have with animal wranglers there at your bidding? You’re kind of forced to shoot what you can shoot when you can shoot it.
I went to film the I work on my own with my partner to help in the sound and the post production and stuff. But filming, collecting the sound, doing everything is just one person’s job. And in that sense, you’re very free to go wherever you want to go and just wait there as long as you want to wait. So I actually went there to film the wall. At the separation wall in East Jerusalem, there’s a route and you stand and you can see. I was actually just standing in order to get footage of the wall and suddenly I see this horse. It was not something that I planned or knew it’s going to be there, but maybe when you start already seeing something, you see it everywhere or you’ve been and that was striking because I understood that this is in a way also the essence of the film in a way.
This horse in East Jerusalem, it was just doing circles and being trapped. Is it hard? I don’t know any other way. I know only I’ve never worked with like a crew that helps. I know how to do things, and I just it sometimes even sounds harder when you have more people than you need to, maybe give them a job or do something with them. It’s easier when it’s just you sometimes!
I’m also wondering if it was difficult for you to secure permissions to film where and when you did with military exercise. And also if there are maybe some like ethical considerations or quandaries that you are kind of engaging in your mind as you’re conducting the shoot.
So my friend got me in to the police station in order to film, which I think they didn’t understand, to be honest. They just let me in because my friend as a journalist. He asked. He said that I’m just like this artist and he completely, like, made it sound as small as possible. And they just let me in, which is kind of bizarre, and they’re all men there, so we they’re very macho culture. So they’re there to show me. They’re there to like, Oh, there’s this girl that just came, you know, with her little camera, let’s show her around. So the tricky part was that I also knew that they don’t understand what it means the camera. They would ask me, if I tell you now something, can you just put it on a different image and you need to tell them, yes, I can do this. If you’re speaking to the recording, I can do whatever I want with it.
So there were things that were said that I really wanted to record without them knowing, because they were gold. But I didn’t because I knew that they there is some sort of like respect towards that also, I think, no matter what you think of what they do, you still need to respect them as humans. So there were moments they were pure gold that I didn’t record because I thought that it’s ethically wrong, and they’re like one on one thing. But it’s tricky. I don’t know if they necessarily would have been happy with the context that it all is.
Well, we both know that the subjects of a documentary do not necessarily have to be happy or pleased with the result or the content that it ultimately produces. And I sense that your aim is not just to present the horses in this condition, but also to critique the conditions of their employment and their training. And, you know, hence the specific focus on, like, one horse, dubbed Number Seven as your subject.
I think actually focus on Number Seven was interesting for me because the horses come from the Netherlands, all of them. They’re all imported when they’re three, which sounds like it’s an old age, but no, they’re still considered as young, and that’s the moment that they’re going to start being trained. And they don’t have a name just because they’re still in the process. But the moment that they probably three weeks after I was there, they probably already named that horse. And that’s also like he was almost already ready to go out and do his duty.
So it was like that, almost, and I think there’s something about you named that horse. Maybe it’s in my mind, but you named that horse and now he’s ready to go. I think I did try to do the film that different people see or focus on different things. But for me, it’s a way to say this world is not good. Look, even this, we’re doing this, then what are we expecting to do with humans if that makes sense?
It does! When your friend, the journalist introduced you as an artist. I don’t think he was misleading anyone. You have a very artistic expression in your film, and I’m just a little bit curious about your phrasing it as a semi documentary and some of the artistic license that you’re taking with it in an expression I would call poetic. There are some very creative visual effects in the film. And if I could just get you to talk a little bit about your own kind of aesthetic style and what you want to lend to this topic as an artistic filmmaker.
So you’re asking about, like how like the visual, like the language, the aesthetic language? Aesthetic language—I think this film is very different from what I was doing prior, but also quite similar. In the sense of the aesthetic is this idea of you go film, edit, go film, edit. So it’s kind of messy. And then I really like wide shots. I like tableau shots. That’s something that always was like, there’s something about this moving picture that is really compelling to me. A semi documentary is also in a way something I don’t know if it’s the most accurate word, but I feel like when there is something that I also add my thoughts to something that is there, then maybe that’s where I’m trying to say because it’s not like a proper documentary that you go and you learn something and you know something after.
It’s through my eyes. I’m not an expert. I do it as as I feel. So maybe that’s the word semi because I don’t think it’s like a [traditional documentary].
I understand completely, and I’m excited for our audience to have an opportunity to watch The Cavalry. And before we get into its recent premiere at Locarno, I was going to ask about your own background and training. Did you go to school, always wanting to be a filmmaker to work in documentary specifically, or did you come at this, like so many other filmmakers do from some different approach?
Well, I’m a fine artist. A visual artist. That’s my box. So I have a BFA in Fine Arts from Belazel Academy in Jerusalem, Israel. And then I have my MFA from the Art Institute, the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, from SAIC, and that’s where I went to the film video department. You can apply for three departments. I applied for three, I applied for performance, sculpture, and film/video. Then I got into all of them. Good job. But then I went to film/video because I was already using video, but I actually didn’t know how to edit. I thought, okay, all the rest of you are familiar with, go to the one that you don’t know in order to learn it.
Then you’re surrounded by all these people that are doing Of course, a lot of different things, but the people that were doing film. There was something that got me interested in it. But I think I will always stay in this both world. For me, if this will be shown in a museum or a gallery space, I’ll be very happy with that. So I like both and each one has its own audiences, strengths, and also disadvantages. I learned a lot from this experience this past few months about what is the film world, how does it work? And they’re good things and they’re bad things. The same as I feel towards the fine art world, that they’re good and bad. So if you can live in both and maybe enjoy the good.
And your film recently debuted at Locarno, that was its world premiere, correct? Were you able to attend?
I was. I was. Crazy experience. It’s beautiful. So that was very but for me it was like I guess maybe for I don’t know how other people feel, but for me it was like an emotional rollercoaster between like this feeling and that feeling and all together.
So you sat in an audience as your film was projected for the first time. Was that the first time you had ever watched it with an audience?
Not only that, it’s the first time that I watched it on, not on my computer!
It’s tricky. It’s not easy. If someone would ask me, do I recommend going and watching how people respond, probably I would say, don’t do it. It’s not good for your mental health.
Well, congratulations to you for its debut and for its success. Are there other festivals on the horizon for it?
Yes, the Vancouver International Film Festival is around the corner, so the film will be there. So that’s the next, and there’s another one, but that one is not yet to say. So I I hope we will keep going because I do think it’s important, and I think especially now to hear voices that are saying something, From Israel against the Israeli government, I find it important. I really do. And especially in this current week that was so horrible. I think it’s important to hear that there are people that think differently and want a different reality for this place.
Your film does exactly that, Alena, and it does so well and in a way that is moving, and I’ll just offer my congratulations and my best wishes for its future in finding more and more audiences in the weeks and months to come. So thank you for joining us at Film Obsessive today.
Thank you so much.
