Wódzka, Izabella Anna;
(2023)
Spaces of exclusion, places of inclusion. Representation of Roma, Gypsy, and Traveller characters in contemporary European cinema.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Roma’s spatial and other exclusion, as well as antigypsyism and Romaphobia, are still present and persistent in our societies across Europe and, indeed, across the globe. This work studies contemporary representations of Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers in European film. The visual texts are read ‘against the grain’ with the intention to highlight their contingency to screen counter-images of Roma peoples. I focus on six feature films released between 2005 and 2018, all directed by non-Roma, featuring a non-professional cast drawn from the Roma community, and all characterised by their genre hybridity and non-hegemonic portrayals of Romani characters. While the core axis of the work remains the politics of Romani representation, I take into account the plurality of human experience and the co-existence of a plethora of identities within one site/body. Therefore, I examine other identity categories and their intersections with Romani identity. Looking beyond the established theories used in film studies to analyse intersectionally marginalised populations, I propose a methodology that combines human geography, cultural anthropology, queer studies, and philosophy to account for the specificity of the Roma experience and representation. The choice of primary sources forms part of the deliberate strategy of challenging and questioning the inherent Western-centrism in academia — the film corpus is drawn equally from the so-called Western and Eastern Europe. It is analysed without any previous prejudices about these regions. That is not to say that the work is not contextualised; quite the opposite, the historical and social context informs much of the analysis done in this work and remains an important reminder that although the space of cinema is flexible and contingent, the reality is often not. Romaphobia and antigypsyism have very concrete consequences on the ground
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Spaces of exclusion, places of inclusion. Representation of Roma, Gypsy, and Traveller characters in contemporary European cinema |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > CMII |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10169172 |
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