About

The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival seeks to deepen understanding of how diverse peoples across the world gain their livelihoods from extensive livestock production.

The relationships of pastoralist people and animals and their food production systems reflect an intimate intertwining of culture, economy and ecology in highly variable environments such as drylands and mountainous regions. In such environments, mobility of animals plays a key role.

Films of multiple genres – spanning documentary, narrative and experimental – made by pastoralists and/or about and with pastoralists offer different insights into issues important to them.

This film festival is organised on behalf of the Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism (CELEP) primarily by the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL), Agrecol Association for AgriCulture & Ecology, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Belgium, and the Centre for Research and Development in Drylands (CCRD) in Kenya.

The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival is seeking funds to enable the film archive to be more accessible. The broader vision is that films included in the collection and in travelling programmes based on different themes can be taken up by others worldwide who want to host screenings. If you know of funding opportunities, please contact Christian Huelsebusch, European Focal Point, Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism (CELEP) (huelse[at]ditsl.org) and contact Film Festival co-director, Anthony Denayer, Veterinarians without Borders, Belgium – a.denayer(at)vsf-belgium.org.

“Perspectives on pastoralism” is a contribution to the preparations for the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists in 2026 (http://www.iyrp.info).