In Gonzales, the cattle business isn’t what it used to be. The once-vibrant town square sits eerily silent. The city has undergone the unhappy transformation of many Texas towns, but the cattle auction preserves a tradition from its role as a bustling county seat. In 2014, Joel Fendelman, then a student in the Department of Radio Television Film at the Moody College of Communication at UT Austin, spent several days with the attendees at the Gonzales Livestock Market for his short film, Auction. Amid the rapid auctioneering, the filmmaker captured a small-town tradition that’s fading fast.
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