The Roma Do Not Exist": The Roma as an Object of Cinematic Representation and the Question of Authenticity (original) (raw)
2018
Representations of the Roma are ubiquitous in the history of Balkan cinema. These films have tended to be by non-Roma directors, with the Roma as the object of representation. Consequently, the critical reception of the films has focused on the issue of verisimilitude. In recent scholarship critics have utilized the psychoanalytic concept of "projective identification" to account for the persistent interest in Gypsy culture and life. In this paper I draw on an alternative tradition of Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that Tony Gatlif's Gadjo dilo, rather than presenting an authentic picture of Roma culture, foregrounds the impossibility of representation ever truthfully capturing the object. Deploying the Lacanian concepts of das Ding and "The Woman does not exist," the paper demonstrates how Gatlif problematises the very notion of the Roma as a homogenized culture and identity.
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2019
The present thesis focuses on the representations of the Roma minority in Yugoslavian and Serbian narrative film. As a corpus-based study (with the total of 35 films divided into seven periods running from 1945 to 2010), it examines in detail the representational strategies employed in depicting the filmic Roma, and aims to specify a developmental trajectory that these strategies take. To this end, a two-step analytical procedure is used: (1) Information Structure Analysis, the analytical framework developed by the present author for the purposes of studying narrative representations, makes use of the diegetic domain categories (Topic/Focus; Active/Passive/Perceiver) as well as the meta-diegetic domain categories (Frame Setter) in order to identify the narrative signals deployed in the construction of minority representations. (2) Narrative-Semiotic Analysis is concerned with the specifics of the representational content. It takes as input the findings of the Information Structure A...
Political and Personal: Pilar Távora and Cinema of Romani Reexsistentia
L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos, 2022
While gypsy imaginaries have played a key role in the representation of a certain idea of national identity throughout the history of Spanish cinema, the social subjects, i.e., the Rroma, have traditionally been relegated to the position of object of the gaze rather than narrators of their own filmic discourses. This research considers contemporary self-representations in cinema based on an epistemology of situated feeling (Periáñez Bolaño, 2016) among the Rroma people and analyses the operations evident in films that contribute to processes of decolonisation of ethno-racial modes of representation. To this end, this article approaches the work of the Spanish filmmaker Pilar Távora from a decolonial perspective and contextualises it in what is described here as Cinema of Romani Reexsistentia. The methods used to achieve these objectives include a review of the literature and of the director’s filmography, an in-depth interview with the filmmaker herself and an analysis of her latest film, Helios Gómez, tinta y munición (2019).
The figure of the imaginary gypsy in film: I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967)
Romani Studies, 2016
The article presents a critical study of Aleksandar Petrović’s celebrated work "I Even Met Happy Gypsies" (1967). The analysis focuses on the content and functions of the cinematic gypsy figure drawing its insights from Yuri M. Lotman’s spatial model of culture, Critical Whiteness Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Antigypsyism. The transposition of the fictional gypsy into the idiom of film is considered in detail on the level of plot, character delineation and visual aesthetics. The work of the renowned Serbian director makes a superb example of the artistic strategies by which the gypsy myth is rendered into an ‘authentic’ ethnographic document. Also, a parallel is drawn between gypsy films and blackface minstrelsy shows as a way of elucidating the three central functions of racial masquerade staged in effect in all gypsy films that make a claim to ethnographic truthfulness.
Reimagining a Segregated World: Roma Heroes, European Dramas
howlround, 2021
Roma theatre companies can be found in several European states. But are Roma theatremakers-who represent the largest ethnic minority in Europe-also present on mainstream theatre stages? Not quite. The small state of Hungary has a large Roma minority of about 10% but an almost exclusively white theatre. Roma are also absent from theatre-related higher education in Hungary. Independent Theater Hungary, a Roma-Hungarian theatre company, is hopefully setting a new standard by publishing the volume Roma Heroes: Five European Dramas. By selecting five Roma stories and plays from five different European countries, this collection aims to support Roma theatre artists' quest to become more visible.
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