Wednesday, September 7, 2016

SMART Film

 Wow! 

On Monday, I went to see a film at a local film festival.  But it wasn't just any film.  This one was all about SMART: the Specialized Mobile Animal Rescue Team.

I had observed training sessions of SMART a few years ago as research for my Pet Rescue Mysteries.  It was known as the Small Animal Rescue Team then--SmART, and it's part of L.A. Animal Services.  I used a fictional supervisor at L.A. Animal Services, in charge of SmART and other teams, as my protagonist Lauren Vancouver's love interest, Matt Kingston.  In the first book in the series, BEAGLEMANIA, SMART rescued some puppy mill pups that had been tossed down a sewer, and members appeared through the rest of the series.

The real SMART team members allowed me to watch them do amazing things like zip lining down mountains, which they sometimes have to do to help save endangered animals--primarily cats and dogs but other animals, too, including horses and birds.  On other occasions they climb trees or rappel off rooftops or tunnel under buildings--and more!

And some of those wonderful people I'd met then were at the film!  I got to see them again and talk with them.  They of course were featured in the film, which showed some of their rescues and also included parts of news broadcasts about them.  The film also incorporated a lot about those wonderful, caring and brave people, including why they devote themselves to saving animal lives and how they interact together. Today, SMART is even more comprehensive than it was when I was doing my research, so what they do is even more impressive, if that's possible.

In all, it was a wonderful film, and a wonderful experience seeing it and some of its cast members.

It's playing other places in the U.S., and it'll also be shown again in L.A. later in the month.  Check it out at http://www.smartmoviedoc.com/   And in case you have any hesitation about going, you should know that it's winning all kinds of awards for independent films.


Wonderful--and amazing!  And definitely a fantastic thing for animals.

1 comment:

Betty Hechtman said...

They sound like an amazing group of people. How cool that they made a movie about what they do.