Family of world champions

The music is in our blood – this stereotyped belief about the Roma was discussed in the latest thematic event of Roma Visual Laboratory at the DocuArt Film Centre. The evening focused on the music section of the Roma culture. Prior to the discussion, parts of Tony Gatlif movies Swing and Latcho Drom and fragments of video reports on Roma musicians by Sosinet.hu, website of the Center for Independent Journalism were shown.

The ruthless moments of life seem to be far away until something cruel happens to us or to someone close to us. Something what we wouldn’t even imagine in a nightmare. Before he set off the boat trip what thought would be the last one, I had made an interview with my cousin Sándor Fehér. He had [...]

Roma craftsmen in Romania meet at fairs. Once hundreds or even thousands, just several tens today, they all have a story to tell. Of a journey and of a tradition, preserved by language and skills, of the proud and free outcasts who would leave everything behind and take on the unexpected.

Mihai Grigore left home when he was 10. He is from Bârlad and has six brothers. His parents were living in a poor Roma neighbourhood, they had odd jobs and could not secure decent living conditions for their children. „There were days when didn’t have anything to eat,” Mihai recalls. Desperation gave him the strength to leave. The Queen’s Heart, an NGO, was his luck: the association gave the chance to some children in the ghetto to live in two flats in Bârlad. Mihai was one of them.

He used to work as an inspector for the Roma minority. He wrote a book on Gypsy customs and traditions, and now he is about to have his second book printed. He has taught policemen, which almost brought him expulsion from the community for reavealing the secrets to „the cops” and for teaching them Romani.

„We’ll go to the Roma communities and show them it is possible. We, who have succeeded, are the examples. There will still be people who will sell their vote in the evening before the elections for some pork meat. It won’t be easy, our main enemy is not another party, it’s ourselves, the Roma community”. This is how Marian Daragiu wants to get 500 000 votes in the 2012 general elections. He is the president of the Civic Democratic Roma Alliance, a new party on the Romanian political stage.

Ciprian Necula’s large office displays a controlled chaos of mugs, pens, a laptop, several pipes and a collection of old objects. „I am not allowed to smoke inside”, he smiles conspiratively, sitting down at his desk. He picks up a pipe and lights it. He is wearing a Gogol Bordello T-shirt, instead of a suit and tie. He is very laid back, and his ironically kind gaze invites you to a relaxed dialogue.

The story of a Florin Dura’s failure starts with the words: ”I was rejected at the officers’ school because I am Roma. I had passed the exam with the highest grade!” The young man from Sascut, in Bacau county, is a graduate of the Engineering Faculty and has a master’s degree in management at Vasile Alecsandri University in Bacău. Three years ago he was admitted as an officer to one of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police (GIRP) structures. He passed all the five tests with the highest grades. Six months later came the almost tragic news – he had been rejected! Without any explanation. ”If a I hadn’t been Roma, I would have been an officer of the Romanian Police” believes the young man

Huedin – Romania. Natașa Kallo goes every morning into the small park situated in the front of the City Hall, where she meets “the patients”. After that she goes inside the institution, trying to solve most of the social problems that she heard about.

Since we are little, we learn that work makes you nobble, regardless it’s nature. But we grow up and we learn to turn our heads when we pass by the people who dig up in trash. Bucharest is full of them: starting with the little recyclers who fish from fetid PET waste, wood and everything they can monetize, and continuing with the cleaning ladies, who labor in staircases and recover whatever they find from the dumpsters. They don’t have labor contracts, nobody pays for their holidays, they aren’t invited to courtesy visits and also they do not receive smiles too often. If they have a darker skin, the stereotypes and the mere human malice denies them any right.