The thousand-year-old tradition of transhumance is alive in Sila with the Mancuso podolian cows
In France with director Eugenio Attanasio the same herd… but on the screen
The thousand-year-old tradition of transhumance has been renewed in Sila. Also this year, the herd of oxen owned by the family Mancuso of Marcedusalike other herds, left at dawn heading towards the Sila, governed by Salvatore Mancusoby his nephew Antonio with his children, relatives, close friends, collaborators and some brave hikers who love the most authentic traditions, and not the fake ones built for tourists.
Along ancient paths, dusty sheep tracks and pieces of asphalt road the herd – to the sound wonderful cowbells – from Marcedusa he reached Petronà, walked along via Dei Vaccari, and continued towards Manulata under the chestnut trees and, higher up, beech trees. Hours and hours of walking, in a magical Sila, on a splendid, unforgettable day, an experience that everyone must have before blind modernity destroys this prehistoric tradition too. Essential for animal welfare.
At each stop, the Mancuso podolica cows drank from the spring water tanks and savored the fresh pasture of the Sila spring, colored and scented by brooms, violets, a thousand flowers among fluttering multicolored butterflies. Of course, if it rained it would be better, because – as Vincenzo Mancuso says looking at the too short grass – “water is earth blood”.
These Mancuso cows from Marcedusa are the most famous cows in the world, the most photographed, the most seen on screens because they were the “protagonists” of Eugenio Attanasio’s successful documentary film “Children of the Minotaur”, which won multiple awards in Italy and abroad.
And just as in Calabria the cows alive and well reached the Sila, in France the documentary film “Sons of the Minotaur – Stories of men and animals”, produced by the Cineteca della Calabria, was screened in the presence of director Eugenio Attanasio. Pictures of the Mancus herdor they were screened at Saint Laurent en Royale, at the Fete de la transumance de la Clarette, to inaugurate French transhumances in the Royans-Vercore region. Cineteca spokesperson Luigi Stanizzi was delegated to the Calabrian transhumance. In France, it still remains a very lively practice in mountain and Mediterranean territories, where it marks and conditions, with a great diversity of forms, the relationships between man, animals and ecosystems. To promote the film and book on transhumance, a UNESCO universal heritage, a group of supporters was formed, “children of the Minotaur” precisely, composed among others by Domenico Levato, Giuseppe Gallucci, Elisabetta Grande, Elia Panzarella, Luigi Stanizzi.
In the work there is the story of a different Calabria but also a universal story, that of the relationship between men and animals that dates back to prehistory. Podolica breeders, in the film the Mancuso family from Marcedusa, are today the custodians of a thousand-year-old culture, practicing extensive breeding, an eco-sustainable form of agriculture. Sons of the Minotaur is a successful project, among the actors include Franco Primiero, Francesco Stanizzi, Mattia Isaac Renda, Gianluca Cortese, Salvatore Gullì, Alessandra Macchioni. A new way of storytelling in Calabria, both literary and cinematographic, is therefore possible, capturing the signs of a peasant civilization that is still very vital in the contemporary world.
A multisensory box set of the new edition of “Sons of the Minotaur/Stories of men and animals” was also created. with book, multilanguage editions optimized for smartphones and tablets, DVD and recording of the sound trail of the transhumance, for those who want to close their eyes and get lost in the concert of the cowbells. Upon the pre-arranged arrival of the Mancuso herd in Sila, followed by the herdsmen on foot or on horseback, or on quads and off-road vehicles, the farmers’ women lit the fires, prepared and served a rustic restorative lunch, under the phages: pancetta, capicollo, soppressata, cheese, green and black olives, penne with ragù, lamb a la pecurara, grilled sausages and ribs, salads, all washed down with rosé wine “guaranteed” by Antonio Sisca on behalf of Antonio Mancuso.
And sweets, liqueurs, grappa. All homemade, of excellent quality. Among the rare guests are university professors, oil millers, breeders, the owner of a travel agency and close friends. There was no shortage of moments of sincere conviviality, of competitions or feuds over who drinks the most with the Pisano breeder from Simeri Carichi, of union between different peoples and cultures, of an improvised private party for a boy’s birthday, of pure joviality, of international trade with the exchange of an eight kilogram piece of cow’s cheese with a Gambian cow; but also of jokes and mystery: it is not clear how at every transhumance lunch the knife of the breeder and oil entrepreneur Antonio Tallarico disappears, having already lost, no one knows how (or have been stolen from him), several precious Opinel and Swiss .
Naturally, for the Mancusos, workers and collaborators, the celebration of wine, toasts, music and singing did not last long and work resumed immediately. Happy and satisfied are the always generous brothers Angelo, Vincenzo and Salvatore Mancuso, Antonio, their children, wives, relatives, all those who collaborated in the perfect success of this other transhumance. At the end, a toast to the director Eugenio Attanasio, involved in transhumance in France, but for him this year only on the screen. And in any case, upon his return from France, a large screening of the film is already planned in Cosenza “Sons of the Minotaur – Stories of men and animals”, scheduled for Tuesday 18 June in Cosenza, at the San Nicola cinema. And so the promotion of this meritorious work carried out in Calabria continues.
