SDPB will air the documentary, Wibaux Wanted, Thursday, April 17th, at 8 PM Central (7 MT) on SDPB1.
The film is mainly shot in Montana with a strong link to South Dakota. The town of Roubaix in South Dakota is named after the hometown of Pierre Wibaux, a famous city in northern France. Viewers will follow the story of Pierre Wibaux, a pioneer in the second wave of Frontier Cowboys. He immigrated from France in the 1880s and established a successful cattle ranch in SE Montana and a gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
SDPB negotiated rights for the documentary through its distributor, Script Line, located in France. Gini Lorin, Director of International Sales for Script Line said:
“The idea for the film stemmed from the curiosity of the director's 10-year-old son, who had heard of a cowboy in the family. Wibaux Wanted is the director's promise to his son to trace and film the story of their ancestor, Pierre Wibaux. He began researching and came across 350 letters written by Pierre Wibaux to his brother in Roubaix, northern France.”
The director of the film, Loïc Wibaux, is a descendant of Pierre Wibaux (the central character in the film): “It's a journey in the footsteps of this ancestor, a pioneer of the American West who boarded the Servia in Liverpool on April 21, 1883. The film shows what it was like to be a cattle rancher, with cowboy traditions still very much alive today. He was one of the largest cattle [ranchers] in the United States, with 65,000 cattle. The name Roubaix (Pierre Wibaux’s hometown in France) was given to [the] Lawrence County, South Dakota [community] in honor of Pierre Wibaux, and which was the site of the ruins of the Clover Leaf mine he bought in 1899.”
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About SDPB
The mission of SDPB is to inspire, connect, and entertain South Dakotans with trusted journalism, quality education, and compelling storytelling. SDPB is a statewide, non-commercial, multi-platform network offering programming produced locally and from PBS, NPR, and other public broadcasting outlets. For information about SDPB and the Friends of SDPB, visit SDPB.org or (605) 443-6960.