Documentary Filmmaker Rebecca Howland

Unlike many of us who daydream about leaving offices and cubicles behind, Rebecca Howland actually did it. Now she’s a documentary filmmaker, and her movie — “The Concord Coach: A NH Legacy” — debuted at Red River Theatres in Concord in July. For her next subject, she’s tapping into her own personal experiences with an animal rescue farm in Chichester and a blue-eyed horse named Neptune to create “Voices in the Dark.”

Photo by Chris Saunders

In her own words:

• My dad liked horses and we would foster horses at my house. I learned what it was like to be on the back of a horse before I could even walk.
• I had been doing the office 9-to-5 thing, and I was looking for a change. I decided to pursue my dreams
• of becoming a documentary filmmaker.
• As I did that, I decided that I also needed an outlet — something that I could do to escape and relax … that’s when I found Live and Let Live Farm.
• I did feed shifts, I mucked paddocks and I saw that they had some training clinics and I decided to take this untrained horse Neptune.
•  After that first training, I was hooked.
• He came from a farm where he had essentially been locked in a windowless barn for 11 years, so no training, nothing. It was tough.
• It was a super windy day in this big cloth tent that was whipping around and making noise, and he was wild. It was so bad one of the trainers offered to help but I said, “No, we’re gonna do this together.”
• Over the last year I’ve worked on a documentary about him, which has helped our relationship. He’s learned to trust me.
• And as of the beginning of November, I am happy to say that I have officially adopted Neptune.
• Now we are in each other’s lives forever.

Live and Let Live is one of the largest farm rescues in the state. For more than 20 years they have rescued farm animals of all kinds, providing them a temporary or permanent safe place to live and interact with people. To learn more about the farm and volunteer, visit liveandletlivefarm.org. To see Howland’s “Voices in the Dark” when it premieres at Concord’s Red River Theatres on Jan. 3, visit redrivertheatres.org.