Ambiguities of the Audiovisual: Gypsy characters in feature films (1895 - 1950)

Summary

1.       Sub-project 3 uses media and cultural-scientific methods to analyse the origin, the change in meaning and the aesthetic and political functions of Gypsy characters in feature films between 1895 and 1950.

2.       Sub-project 3 maps intermedial and interdiscursive intersections between the visuality and narrativity of feature films, other pictorial narratives, aesthetics of the spectacle and scientific or journalistic forms of Gypsy representation.

3.       Sub-project 3 analyses, based on the concepts of stereotype and agency, the contribution of feature films to semantics and practices of exclusion and elimination as well as to semantics and practices of inclusion and emancipation.

Research questions

1. What traditions of pictorial narrative and spectacle do the cinematic representations of Gypsy figures draw on, what cross-references exist between these representations, literary and scientific texts, journalistic and regulatory discourses and what do these representations contribute to the development of cinematography?
2. How do the motifs, characters, plot patterns and genre conventions of the feature film contribute either to the construction of antiziganist stereotypes or to their criticism and thus to the demonstration of the agency of Rom*nja and Sinti*zze in the field of tension between the representation of others and self-articulation? What is the significance of actors and showmen (keyword: travelling cinema) from the minority in this context?
3. What role do feature films with Gypsy characters play in the intertwined history of antiziganism, antisemitism and colonial racism? In other words: How are the ambiguities of the audiovisual connected to the ambivalence of this history of entanglement in Europe between 1895 and 1950?

Cooperations

with other projects: Interfaces concern, among other things the connection between image narrative and stereotype or iconography and scenography (sub-projects 3 and 1), interactions between the spectacle and the cinema of attraction as well as film and opera (sub-projects 3 and 2), relations between filmic and scientific descriptions of Gypsies (subprojects 3 and 4) or relations between filmic descriptions of others and journalistic self-descriptions of Rom*nja (sub-projects 3 and 5) as well as the semantics of exclusion and elimination in feature films and in Realpolitik (subprojects 3 and 6).

with other institutions: Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Virtual Centre for Cultural Semiotics, joint project ‘Mediale Antiziganismen - Von der interdisziplinären Analyse zur kritischen Medienkompetenz (MeAviA)’ and DFG Graduiertenkolleg 2840 ‘Ambivalente Feindschaft’ in Heidelberg

Conference 1: ‘Transmediale Bilderzählung und Stereotyp’ in Flensburg, organised by sub-project 1 (Bell/UIz) and sub-project 3 (Bauer/Mladenova), Transmedial image narrative and stereotype

Research areas

Core study area: Germany

Additional study area: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, France, England, Spain

Aims

AIM 1– Using the concept of scenography, integrated analyses of fiction and artefact effects (e.g. empathy or empathy blockade), genre conventions and visual traditions, visuality and narrativity in feature films in order to deconstruct antiziganistic stereotypes on the one hand and to reconstruct the agency of Rom*nja and Sinti*zze on the other.

AIM 2 – Cartography of intermedial and interdiscursive interfaces (e.g. to paintings, photographs, posters, operas, literary and journalistic texts, scientific and regulatory discourses) as a contribution to the joint database of the research group and to the European intertwined history of antiziganism, antisemitism and colonial racism.

Selected results

- Dissertation (AT): ‘Functions of the Gypsy motif in early feature films’

- Monograph: ‘Antiziganism in silent film’, Mladenova

- Monograph: ‘Antiziganism in early sound film’, Bauer

Dr. Radmila Mladenova

University of Heidelberg

Antiziganism Research Centre

Further information on the university website