African-American and Romani Filmic Representation and the ‘Posts’ of Post-Civil Rights and Post-EU Expansion

Abstract

In this article I explore linkages between the evolution of African-American filmic representation and the patterns of Romani representation in films from Central and Southeast Europe (CSEE). More specifically, I use the 1970s Blaxploitation movement and subsequent shift of African-American representation into films reliant on a realist aesthetic to contextualize analysis of the shortcomings of the Civil Rights Movement to provide broad integration for African-Americans. Given other similarities between the racialized positionalities of African-Americans and Roma, I argue that Blaxploitation can illuminate trends in the cinematic depictions of CSEE Roma, since the Roma Rights movement has had to contend with similar shortcomings in achieving political, social, and economic inclusion. The films I analyze in this piece include Roming (2007), Just the Wind (2012), Episode of an Iron Picker (2013), and Bravo! (2015).

A Beautiful, Sad Tale about Nonexistent Socialism in Hungary: The Story of Gyuri Cséplő

“…Characteristically, the authorities deemed cave dwellings and Budapest tenement houses "slums" to the same degree as shantytowns at the edge of villages. According to plan, 43 slums were to be eradicated under the fourth five-year plan, 536 under the fifth, 288 under the sixth, and the remaining 323 after 1986 (HNA XXVI-D-1-c 16. c).22 On the metaphoric filmic usage of Gypsy/Romani characters, seeIordanova 2008;Rucker-Chang 2018. 23 Anikó Imre analyzes the issue of Gypsy/Romani representation in a global context. As Imre points out, the critical theories of 'whiteness' emphasize that the racist concept of "supremacy" was global, and as a hidden ideology it has determinated the East and Central European social history and representation of Gypsies as a racialized group(Imre 2005).…”