EVENTS

Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Sweetgrass

Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Auditório
18.04.2026, Saturday, 16h00

Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Sweetgrass, 2009, film still

With an online introduction by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Willem de Rooij.

Lumiar Cité and the Museum Nacional de Etnolgia are honoured to host a special screening of Sweetgrass (2009) by visual anthropologists Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. The film is shown in the framework of Willem de Rooij’s exhibition ‘Hut Hut’, currently on view at Lumiar Cité in collaboration with the National Museum of Ethnology and the Museo del Pastor (Villaralto, Spain),

Premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, Sweetgrass explores modern sheep farming in the US state of Montana – from shearing and lambing on the farm to driving flocks in search of pasture. In the warmer months, travelling over hundreds of miles by horse or motor vehicle, herders guide the large flocks through lush, steep-sloped mountains, where wild animals lie in wait for the sheep’s arrival. The shepherds take shelter in mobile tents made of plastic, lost in the solitude of the inhospitable landscape and taking refuge in the anticipation of the comfort that awaits them upon their return. Amid contemplative images that evoke the cinematic imaginary of the Western – here with sheep instead of cattle – we enter a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are intimately intertwined.

Session duration: 101 min.
The film is in English with Portuguese subtitles. Entry is free and limited to the number of seats available.

Sweetgrass was produced in the context of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, which promotes innovative combinations of aesthetic and ethnographic research through various media, including film, video, photography, phonography and installation.