World Nomads Film Festival

An afternoon on the pasture

⏱️ 370 min 🌍 Hungary 🎬 Zsolt Molnár & Sándor Karácsony 👥 Hungarian Puszta Herders
An afternoon on the pasture

Official Synopsis

László Sáfián – born into a Hungarian family that has been herding for generations – explains how he, with his dog, manages close-herded grazing on a patchy semi-natural pasture. He speaks about the relationship between pasture and livestock, how he portions the pasture, and how he learnt and transmits this knowledge. This 370-minute “slow film” documents traditional ecological knowledge of herders in their setting and at their pace, using herder–scientist dialogue about the fine-tuned decisions the herder made on this afternoon.

Filmmaker Biography

Filmmaker(s): Zsolt Molnár & Sándor Karácsony

Dr. Zsolt Molnár is a leading Hungarian ethnoecologist and botanist at the Centre for Ecological Research. Sándor Karácsony is a renowned documentary cinematographer specializing in traditional agricultural knowledge.

Molnár, Z.. (2012). Classification of pasture habitats by Hungarian herders in a steppe landscape (Hungary). Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine , 8 , 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-8-28
Molnár, Z. et al.. (2020). Knowledge co-production with traditional herders on cattle grazing behaviour for better management of species-rich grasslands. Journal of Applied Ecology , 57 (9) , 1677–1687. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13664

Read more about Hungarian Puszta Herders