Framework

A Way Forward for Gypsies(Angela, My Love, Robert Duvall, U.S. 1983)1Angelo My Love, directed by Robert Duvall in 1983, was probably the first full-length film made west of Vienna to focus exclusively on the Roma and to feature large chunks of their...

A fetish masks the absence but not hermetically or permanently.Hamid Nancy (1993, 97)'She was lying, señor, as she always lied. I wonder whether that girl ever spoke one word of truth in her life' (1963 [1845, 24]). With these words, Antonio (Antonio...

Amari Bon onze schoondochter/ Aman Bori-Our Daughter in LawNetherlands, 1998, Grietje Relier and Paul Ofner. 25 min.Documentary highlighting important aspects of present-day diasporic experience. The family of young Gusti, a Rom from the Netherlands,...

I took up editing this special issue on images of Romanies in international cinema, relying on my expertise in Eastern European and Balkan film, thinking that it was within this group that most Romani-themed films abound. It did not take long to realise,...

Recovering Art in the Language of Cinema 2003. The visual turn: classical film theory and art history. Ed. Angela Dalle Vacche. Rutgers University Press.While cinema was finding its language as a medium, it turned to art and photography for methods of...

This evening a total stranger called me from San Francisco to ask when I could come to make a film about his family. Tm a Gypsy,' he said, 'if you put my family on television, you can show how the real Gypsies live.' I am a British filmmaker living in...

'The problem is the way they say, 'Gypsy.' At that very same moment, I will say, 'Gadjo.'"József Choli Daróczi, Hungarian Romani1 poet and activist2(1) "The Gypsy' and the Problem of Representing the NationWhen I translate the Hungarian phrase 'vászoncigányok'...

Silvio Soldini's Un'Anima Divisa in Due: Some Things Are More Important Than Happiness(A Soul Divided in Two. Silvio Soldini, Italy/Switzerland, 1993)1Travelers as well are experiencing a loss of identity: since nomadism is no longer accepted, since...

Tchernata Lyastovitsa(The Black Swallow, Georgy Dyulgerov, Bulgaria/France/Hungary 1997)1I first saw this film two years ago; a friend had videotaped it from the Bulgarian satellite TV channel. 'It's about Gypsies,' she told me. 'Directed by Georgy Dyulgerov.'...

In comparison to the West, there is not much material documenting the life of Romanies in Russia, and traditionally they have not made films about themselves. Various regional TV stations have produced documentaries on the Romanies that, in most cases,...

The Gypsies of Svinia(The Gypsies of Svinia, John Paskievich, Canada, 19981The Gypsies of Svinia begins and ends with images of a blind girl sitting among her friends singing, alone and a capella, a delicately beautiful but untranslated song. These two...

Witnesses and Commentators: Romani Character in Ko to tamo peva(Ko to tamo peva /Who is Singing Over There? Slobodan Sijan, Yugoslavia, 1980)1Narratives centred on Romanies or featuring Romani characters in important roles have been a recurring theme...