Through other eyes: Representations of Romanies in European Film and the genesis of identity through alterity.

In general terms, European film occupies an essentially peripheral discourse relation to the dominance of mainstream American film.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> Yet within this peripheral film discourse, European cinema firmly establishes a dominant discourse when selecting as its discursive object images of the marginal and/or foreign. The contextualisation of the figure of  non-sedentary characters in European film exemplifies the ideologemes of a dominant discourse which attempts to establish and strengthen, or conversely to inquire and subvert, its own identity by objectifying a minority and using this minority as a source forthe symbolic construction or genesis of a more stable idea of individual, collective and cultural id/entity.

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Both marginal and perceived as the essentially other against which the self is ascertained, the Romany, gypsy or traveller<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--> is approached in film only to be abandoned again once this sense of identity has been established. It is proposed to investigate firstly which discursive means are used and to which effect in recent film to generate a dominant role by subjugating the figure of the itinerant. Secondly, this paper will investigate to what extent representations of non-sedentary figures serve as an adequate outlet in dealing with problematic and contested issues in contemporary society such as alienation, an increasing awareness of the role of cultural symbols, of historical narratives, and of language and ideas of the nation in processes of collective and individual identity construction. Focusing on representations of fictional characters and the structure of perspective in relation to them, this paper aims to demonstrate the functional significance for the genesis, establishment, reinforcement, critical questioning and subversion in relation to notions of national, regional, cultural and individual identities through representations of Romanies and other members of non-sedentary groups in recent Spanish, German, Irish and French film. I will discuss the following films in their chronological order of production: Carlos Saura’s Carmen, Edgar Reitz’s Heimat, episode 1, Fernweh, Jim Sheridan’s Into the West and, most recently, Tony Gatlif’s Gadjo Dilo, after some initial thoughts on the issue of identity production through film.

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The definition of the self as a distinct entity necessitates its delimitation, which is accomplished by means of defining it in opposition to another entity. The genesis and establishment of positive individual and collective identities are thus always achieved through opposition to a heterogeneous entity which is characterised by traits that are valued negatively. This process can be observed both for individual and collective, i.e. cultural identities.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--> Film is particularly suitable for the construction of identities as it is primarily a popular form of cultural expression, thus reaching a comparably large number of people so that Morley and Robins can ascertain that “filmic images … have increasingly shaped the way in which we Europeans see ourselves.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--> At the same time, it possesses the potential to create a collective experience firmly grounded in a sensual experience of sight and sound which is emotionally more direct and less dependent on abstract and critical understanding than other forms of cultural expression. Film, as a primarily visual medium, is able to employ the visual image to its maximum potential. Visual image lends itself to an interpretation as symbolic image, which is characterised by its close relation to myth, the collective attempt to give meaning to questions of origin and nature of a specific community. This too, in turn, can be utilised for the creation of a collective identity. Film furthermore lends itself particularly well to the expression of peripheral identities such as small nations, the regional, the personal, as well as marginalised groups within a larger entity (or even, in our context, European identities in relation to a perceived cultural hegemony of the U.S.) which are specifically reliant on symbolic and visual codes to generate a collective code.

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In the light of the increasing globalisation of the economy, politics and culture, be it in the context of the European Union or US American hegemony, one can observe a apprehension of the essentially unstable and changing definition of specific collective identities in Europe. As Aitkin has observed, “the issue of collective identity generally arises during periods in which existing patterns of cultural cohesion begin to fragment, and disparities appear between established cultural stereotypes and emerging social, political, and economic circumstances.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]--> A crisis of collective identity makes a symbolical preoccupation with it imperative in order to address the crisis artistically in an attempt to resolve it. This may occur either to re-establish a former collective identity, to suggest a new identity, or to subvert received ideas of the features of an existing identity.

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In addition, film represents a medium where identification is a crucial element in the reception, i.e. viewing context. The spectator is usually encouraged by filmic means and narrative structure to identify with a character. Its visual code and screening conventions exclude the external world in order to suggest the reality of the filmic world. Simultaneously, the viewing of a film is a collective experience and as such presents the possibility of referring and appealing to collective identities. A central question in the discussion of the four films is thus the perspective structure employed by the filmic narration which will shed light on the processes involved in representing characters of Romany or traveller identity. To this end, it is crucial to analyse closely the elements and structure of point of view, perspective and subjectivity as they affect the representation of fictional characters in any one film.

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Romany and traveller characters, I would argue, are presented in the context of the construction of collective identities in two ways. They either signify the other against which the collective identity is distinguished or they are the agent through which the problematic self is explored in an attempt to reach a resolution. In both instances, the Romany identity as such is relevant only as a tool and a function for the non-Romany identity.

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((auslassen fuer den Vortrag)Aitkin suggest the usefulness of the effects of globalisation to explain a moment of crisis in European national and transnational collective identities. He argues that globalisation creates two tendencies. One is to strengthen the notion of the traditional, if yet crumbling, national identity which is uneasily paired with its counterpart, namely national disintegration due to marginal movements and subnational identities finding their expression in political and cultural terms. Nationalism thus emerges “around new ethnic and political configurations”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[6]<!--[endif]--> as a reaction to globalisation and its impact on a new dominant and hegemonic economic reality which threatens cultural and political expression. It is culture, and specifically popular culture such as music and film, which continues to sustain a sense of national identity as developed in the 19^th century.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[7]<!--[endif]--> National Identities are thus defined even more obviously as symbolic constructs, as truly “imagined communities” the label given to collective and national identities by Benedict Anderson <!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[8]<!--[endif]-->..)

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Carmen, 1983:

Carlos Saura’s film Carmen creates a conscious intersection of the many realisations of the Carmen motif that can be considered to be part of a common pan-European cultural knowledge. The awareness of the preceding texts is made explicit through the high degree of reflexivity in representation and in the metatextual structure of the film. Thus, both the opera score of George Bizet and the text of Mérimée’s novella are superimposed and comment on the narrative while the narrative is a revaluation of the earlier texts. Consequently, the film takes part of its meaning from an intertextual dialogue which is made conscious through filmic means and increasingly thwarts the viewers’ attempts to create an even, resolved and definite interpretation of the various layers narrative layers and perspectives.

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                The film narrates the casting, instruction, development and staging of a Flamenco dance version of Carmen on the one hand and the emerging love affair between the choreographer Antonio Gades and the dancer named Carmen whom he casts as Carmen. In the original novella by Merimée, the gypsy identity of Carmen  determines significant aspects of her character which in turn are the basis for the re-interpretation of her character in this film.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[9]<!--[endif]--> The character of the dancer is intrinsically linked with the character of the myth Carmen. The fact that they have the same name only increases the deliberate confusion that is built up in relation to the viewers' attempts to distinguish between the dancer and the literary and stage character. This ambivalent character is introduced firstly purely textually, through the voice-over recital by Antonio Gades of the novella text and his playing of the Bizet opera, which in turn is re-interpreted by Paco de Lucia. Thus the viewer has, like Antonio, a preconception of the character before her first appearance in person. When Carmen is first shown, the camera angle establishes a prolonged eyeline shot originating behind Antonio who is seated. Thus the camera captures both the gaze of Antonio and Paco and the object of their gaze which is Carmen entering the dance class. In terms of point of view, the viewer partly assumes Antonio’s perspective. At the same time, this perspective remains ambivalent: as Antonio himself is observed by the camera as he observes, the shot is both subjective from Antonio’s point of view and objective by allowing the viewer to observe the subject of the gaze, namely Antonio. This ambivalent and reflexive perspective structure is maintained throughout the film by the elaborate use of mirrors which allows on all occasions at least two point of views, which at stages defy resolution into a single interpretation by the viewer.

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In this way, the camera assumes two roles, firstly that of a narrator who present the viewer with an assumedly objective and omniscient account of the narrative and distinguish between its two levels, namely the staging of a ballet on the one hand and the love story between Antonio and Carmen on the other. This role is heterodiegetic to the diegetic world of the film and hierarchically superior to the diegetic level of the dance and the love story. Secondly, the camera also assumes the role of a character. This is realised in two ways: in the first instance, the camera presents the viewer with Antonio’s point of view, thus stepping behind a specific character, equivalent to a reflector in narrative terms. At the same time this point of view is broken by both the reflexive effect of the mirrors and the inclusion of the observing subject, Antonio, in these perception shots. The camera contains the point of view of Antonio and that of the ideal viewer, namely the audience for the dance performance alongside the film spectator who takes this very place when viewing the film. Thus, the the ambivalent role of the choreographer/dancer, observer and observed Antonio is doubled. For instance, in the first training scene between Carmen and Cristina, the camera assumes the position of an audience. However, this point in space is that of the mirror and the viewer is acutely aware of the reciprocal nature of Cristina observing Carmen from the same angle as we do, and Carmen observing both hristina and herself in the mirror, which is the viewer’s and the camera’s position. This perspective structure is further complicated when the next scene adds Antonio’s perspective as it becomes apparent that his office is situated beyond the transparent mirror and he observed the training from there - the very position the viewer assumed alongside the camera previously.

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In assuming a reflexive role, the film acts as a mirror and through a mirror, allowing th espectator to scrutinise the act of staging a cultural icon alongside Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura. With Antonio, we stare in a voyeuristic, but simultaneously critical, stance at the dancers, Antonio himself, and finally the filmic production of image. Narrations are mirrored alongside narrative levels and the mirror assumes both a material and symbolic reality.

The mirror allows the subject to perceive itself both as a subject and an object, deconstructing the demarcation of the self and the other which is central to the genesis of an individual identity. The constant oscillation between points of view and the subjective and nature character of observation coupled with the film's intertextual dialogue with preceding texts thematises the central concern of the film, namely the constructed character of the cultural image of a specific country or nation. The reflexivity of the film alerts the viewer to the constructed character of the film and to the staging of Carmen, while the same time this is undermined by the confusion of narrative levels and its climax of the last scene which remains ambivalent as to whether Carmen is killed as part of the performance or in the diegetic reality of the filmed world, which too is a performance for the film camera. The confusion between subject and object through the look into the mirror is equivalent to the confusion of the cultural image of Carmen as an outside view of Spanishness and the use of its image from within, as an image for self-definition in cultural terms; between the foreign and the Spanish view of Spanishness. The film is an attempt to repossess the cultural image of Carmen and interprete it from the inside. But this attempt is essentially and crucially problematic as it cannot free itself from the existing image. The subtext is omnipresent and affects all attempts to reclaim the cultural image, as is the objectifying observing view in the mirror which alienates the subject and creates a critical distance to cultural self identity.

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This ambivalence is further exploited in the opposing functions of the dance. On the one hand, Antonio casts Carmen for her authentic, uncontrolled and yet unshaped way of dancing and demands her to “be Carmen” in “an impulse to attain authenticity, and a counter-desire to 'stage' that authenticity.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[10]<!--[endif]--> This is a demand for the individual to fit the image and a preconceptionbased on the previous texts. Antonio attempts to form her into direct expression, but in so doing, the direct expression becomes a construct. It is no surprise, then, that fact imitates fiction, or fiction rather imitates yet another version of fiction. The cultural image of Carmen, as established by Mérimée and re-interpreted by Bizet and Saura, has an impact on the construct of cultural self identity in Spain which cannot easily separated from these cultural texts in order to be dissected and re-assessed. The logic conclusion is the final irresolvable confusion of fact and fiction, which is equivalent to the confusion between the cultural image of collective identity and its actual counterpart. As the staging of Carmen is determined or at least influenced by existing preconceptions, so does the act of staging Carmen have an impact on the life of its participants. The image created through art affects cultural reality which both makes a re-appropriation of this image through a new interpretation of Spanish cultural self-identity imperative but simultaneously problematic as it can never clearly distinguish between self-perception and foreign perception. The “romantic falsification of cultural images”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[11]<!--[endif]--> is not easily undone.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[12]<!--[endif]-->

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Heimat, 1985:

The film Heimat by Edgar Reitz, it has been argued, presents us with an uneasy sense of German regressive provinciality, which, to a large extent, excludes the atrocities of the Holocaust. Contrary to this widespread reading, it is through the character of Apollinia, a young women said to be of gypsy descent and quintessentially estranged from the closely knit provinicial village that the more problematic and ambivalent components of the complex nature of "Heimat" are imaged from the outset of the series.

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Whether the film was criticised for its implicit aesthetics or hailed for its originality, it initiated in any case controversial discussions of German national identity, the possibilities and impossibilities of a revisionist approach to German history and the adequacy of an autobiographical approach to history. It moreover explores the intrinsically problematic nature which lead us to regard images of the German province, a historical narrative based on personal memory, a tight family unit and rural context with suspicion. In relation to cinematographic representations of history, film is characterised by its lack of linguistic tense markers which are at the disposal of novelists and historicists.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[13]<!--[endif]--> Instead, the filmic image is always in the present tense to the spectator. Consequently, the historical image is received in a more direct and less mediated manner, leaving space for both a more personal and direct experience of history on the basis of this visual image and, on the other hand, the possibility of a manipulative attempt with regards to factual history. It thus also bears the danger of a misrepresentation of history due to the lack of critical distance through the immediacy of the film image. The image mirrors the spectator's memory and suggests a material reality of the presented narrative which may be more convincing because of its visual and aural immediacy than a written account of history. There is a tendency in film that the markers of fiction, which are obvious in the medium of books, are suspended because of the material reality of the image and the fact that we experience the world primarily visually.

In addition, through the visual image film is able to create a process of memory and while simultaneously challenging existing notions of static and fossilised versions of memory.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[14]<!--[endif]--> Film gives time a material reality through the immediacy of image and sound. History as presented in Heimat is placed outside the sphere of written history, instead it gives an account of everyday history and is conceived as an essentially different version of German history which voices elements of persisting collective identity by conjuring up images of the province and an apparently closely-knit community life. "Heimat" as such contains notions of childhood, belonging, integration, pre-industrial, rural landscape, unalienated being, being at one with nature. But in the film this notion is undermined by the ambivalent nature of "Heimat". The focus of critical disapproval has been the apparent suggestion of a complacent smugness, a dangerous and uneasy notion in the light of German history, in which the province has been linked with a feeling of an innocent sense of belonging: “Bilder aus der deutschen Provinz sind nie unschuldig”.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[15]<!--[endif]--> The reaction to Heimat made the latent nostalgia for collective identity of the mid 1980s apparent. The film was received as an expression for this longing and initiated a vivid and critical discussion about notions of collective and national identity, history and memory.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[16]<!--[endif]--> At the same time it constituted a reaction against American films on the German past such as the Holocaust series. Reitz himself claimed that these films were an obstacle in the attempt to exert control over representations of German history from the inside, demanding “daß wir unsere Vergangenheit erzählerisch in Besitz nehmen, aus der Welt der Urteile ausbrechen und künstlerisch verarbeiten”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[17]<!--[endif]-->

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The cinematic reflexivity present in the film increases the viewer’s awareness of the constructive character of the filmic text and therefore the process and effects of selection. The practice of inclusion and exclusion are both the basis of individual, and therefore personal, memory and that of the narrator's selection of photographs which leads to each narrative event of the chronicle. This principles of selection at the heart of personal memory, autobiograhy, the selection of a photographic motif and, by extension, by the narrative event that is historiography, is further elaborated upon through the character of Apollonia. She is the impersonation of exclusion, being the first of many characters to leave Schabbach, as well as giving voice and action to Paul Simon’s own repressed urge to leave the village behind. The idyll is not quite the nostalgic place of personal memory as the black and white film, its insistence on the role of family photos and the personal memory and oral history they promote make us believe. Nostalgia there is, but it is permeated with a feeling of unease and intolerance which makes the soil on which the national identity walks an uncertain terrain. “Die dem deutschen Heimatbegriff inhärenten widersprüchlichen Erfahrungs- und Gefühlsinhalte finden in diesem Film ihre narrative Entsprechung in dem Spannungsverhältnis von Dableiben und Weggehen, von Fernweh und Heimweh.“<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[18]<!--[endif]--> Heimat is thus essentially ambivalent and oscillates between processes of inclusion and exclusion which are the correlatives of identity and alienation for the characters on the one hand and the spectator's reading of the film on the other.

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Point of view and perspective determine Apollonia’s representation to a significant extent. She is exclusively presented externally and never assumes the role of focalizer. Therefore her character is highly mediated but within this mediation she is presented through a number of perspectives. Initially, the camera images her in a point of view shot of Paul Simon upon his arrival in Schabbach, followed by the assumption of a narrator perspective by the camera when it images the the interaction between her and Karl Glasisch in a distanced assumption of an external perspective of a non-participating medium. A third perspective is introduced through the gossip of the extended family and Marie Goot’s comments about Apollinia which positions her within the received negative stereotype of gypsies, namely a combination of physical attraction, poverty, witchcraft, an irresistable effect on men, and physical darkness as a physiognomic indication of psychological darkness. This view is further accentuated by Eduard reading about a serious criminal offence in the newspaper of which “Hausierer” are suspected, which is immediately translated as “gypsies” by Marie-Goot. The intrinsic emotional, psychological, and even, at times, physical violence (one only has to call to mind the account of how a child pokes out his cousins eye at a first communion festive dinner or the discovery of the body of a murdered woman) in the village impede a “heile Welt” interpretation of village life. This is further underlined by the camera-narrator presenting Apollonia's suffering from the villager's treatment in a sympathetic manner. The prevalence of a camera angle from above when she is shown in the village suggests her dependency and helplessness, while during her trip to Koblenz she is shown from below with the sky included in the frame, suggesting notions of freedom and flight at the same time as underlining her character's significance in this key scene of the first episode. Similarly, the camera assumes an external eyeline perspective when she is shown crying in the shed, thus combining an assumedly objective and distanced narrator role while it invites the viewer to identify with her.

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In relation to other characters, Apollinia contrasts with most villagers due to her foreign origin. Not being from the village but being a blown-in estranges her as much as her darker appearance and the uncertainty about her father. At the same time, her character corresponds to that of Paul Simon as she ascertains their irrefutable difference in relation to the other village people. „Die Leut sinn nit so wie du. Du bis sowieso anners wie die Leut im Dorf“ and „Du gehörst a nit nach Schabbach, so wie ich Paul“. The prevalence of her focalisation through Paul (by the extensive use of subjective shots during scenes between Paul and Apollonia while she is externally focalised by the camera in scenes where Paul is absent) builds up to the final confrontation of the two option between which he has to choose: either to return to Schabbach and an entrapped life of traditions which he rejects, with the only reprieve of his radio, or to continue the journey with Apollonia and leave the town. This key scene is framed by scenes of domesticity involving Maria which highten the contrast between the two women after their initial correspondence. Throughout the film, Apollonia is associated with the open and outside world, while Maria is essentially bound to a domestic environment. Symbolically, this is translated into the image of the window and the alternating views from the inside out and from the outside in. Eventually Paul fails to accommodate his longing for freedom from entrapment (the symbol for this is the first radio of the town which he is engaged in building. It connects him with the world beyond) with his urge for belonging and domesticity (his marriage to Maria). He follows Apollonia’s example, thus once again suggesting her central role as an " objective correlative“ for his own ambivalent feelings in relation to his home, Heimat and Fernweh. This attitude of Paul Simon in relation to Heimat, characterised by an urge to be a part of it and to leave it behind, sets an uneasy tone which is the base line for the remainder of the series.

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The film text commences by asserting its genre through the use of structuring elements such as dates, genre markers, ironic on screen text („made in Germany“...), elements which suggest an „auktorialen Erzähler an, der für die Auswahl, Anordnung und Datierung der Ereignisse zu sorgen scheint. Bereits hier wird also der episch ausholende, episodisch-linear chronologische Erzählduktus, der den ganzen Filmzyklus charakterisiert, deutlich.“<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[19]<!--[endif]-->Furthermore, „Das eilige Aufeinanderzulaufen und Zusammentreffen von Kamera und Protagonisten lässt die Präsenz der Kamera spüren und impliziert gleich von Anfang an die prinzipielle Abhängigkeit der Zuschauerwahrnehmung von dem, was die Kamera für ihn einfängt. Jeder Film verwandelt die Wirklichkeit in einen Text.“<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[20]<!--[endif]--> This is to say that a critical distance is provided through filmic means which is then exemplified and elaborated upon through the character of Apollonia who gains individual profile through her relation of contrast and correspondence to the protagonist of this episode, Paul Simon.

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Into the West:

Jim Sheridan’s Into the West utilises the portrayal of travellers and the story he narrates to provide a metonymical expression of authentic Irish lifestyle at the same time as critically commenting the loss of this lifestyle as a consequence of modernity and a postcolonial state of existence. The context and genre is that of a fairy tale story, which is established in the first scene: A white horse is imaged, which is to lead the children, and with them, their father, into the west. The “west” is a trope laden with connotations just as the trope “Heimat” is for a German viewer. It comprises both ideas of the American wild west, and those of the west of Ireland which in symbolic terms was of crucial significance for the genesis of Irish identity at the start of the 20^th century.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[21]<!--[endif]--> The Irish west offered a set of characteristics which were evidently in opposition to cultural determinants associated with Britain, combining notions of a pre-modern, rural and lifestyle assumedly connected to the post-colonial identity with which the Irish intelligentsia sought to reconnect in an attempt to establish a collective Irish identity distinct from Britain. The symbolic creation of a distinct collective identity went hand in hand with political independence in the making which was perceived to be unstable and under threat. In the film, the travellers’ life is presented as a way of life acutely threatened by attitudes and a modern lifestyle. Cultural shorthands are employed to recall existing oppositions in the definition of Irish identity: thus the film presents us with the familiar opposition between the urban and the rural, between the poverty of council housing and the spiritual richness of a life in touch with nature and “the old ways”. The children, too, are presented as the yet uncorrupted remnants of authentic and original travellers’, read Irish, life, simultaneously calling upon Romantic notions of an idealised state of being encountered in childhood. The extensive use of what Booth<!--[if !supportAnnotations]-->[HAC1]<!--[endif]-->  (Buch in strath Bib, genaue Angabe ergaenzen) labels the cultural or referential code,<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[22]<!--[endif]--> i.e. symbols and codes which belong to a common stock of culturally determined symbols, is therefore evident.

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The white horse Tir na nOg represents the symbolic embodiment of the past and the mother figure that is absent in the family and the country. The horse is connotatively linked to both the authentic lifestyle of the travellers and collective Irish identity as proposed by the film. It is beautiful, full of grace, wild, elegant, powerful and an allegory of freedom. It is further characterised through music which combines the speed of the horse and connects it with Irish identity through in musical terms. The colour scheme used in its representation situates it in a space outside of reality and calls upon notions of the mysterious and unrealistic which is followed by the camera pursuing the horse’s glance in a subjective shot of the old traveller collecting mussels and his traditional travellers’ wagon. From the outset, the horse is thus presented as a human character and the viewer is invited to assume its point of view.  In the next shot, the travellers’ wagon is pictured on a small and deserted road through the bogland, an image of the road cutting diagonally through the frame which is a token and cliché element of films dealing with issues relating to Ireland and Irish identity<!--[if !supportAnnotations]-->[HAC2]<!--[endif]--> .<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[23]<!--[endif]--> This idyll constructed at the outset of the film is then interrupted by the sound of a plane flying overhead and a sudden disillusionment through the presence of a modern urban context: the co-operation houses, anonymous and deprived blocks of flats, poverty, a father stricken by alcoholism and an absent mother present us with a highly dysfunctional family, lacking in material means but also in spiritual an emotional needs. When presented with the white horse, the father is unable to tame it as he has lost “the gift”, he no longer is in touch with his own identity, past and culture, whereas the younger boy has an intuitive ability to control it. While the father is already alienated from his culture, the younger boy is not and this motif of the yet uncorrupted potential of youth is further elaborated through the recital of the story of Oisin by the old traveller. In a typical storytelling situation, another instant of original, rural and oral Irish culture, the old traveller retells the myth of the last representative of the old Irish order Oisin and his loss of eternal youth, his dreams, and with him, original Irish traditions by touching the ground of a country that has already changed.

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The horse eventually escapes the hand of the law in a display of its willpower, independence and freedom and takes the two children with him. In an attempt to find his children, the father is forced to assume his old position as king of the gypsies, he gives up alcohol and heads west in pursuit of his children and in a process to reconsider the choices he made in his life.

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The nucleus of society and entity that metonymically represents the collective as opposed to the individual is the family, which is presented as manifestly problematic. This dysfunctional family structure indicates an identity crisis in the context of the larger unit of collective identity. The mother is dead and absent, the father has an alcohol problem and lost control over his children and thus their respect. The brother has to look after his younger sibling and the grandfather is unwanted. Metaphorically, by associating the grandfather with gypsy traditions and the father with the settled but economically and spiritually deprived urban life, this is a commentary on the postcolonial state of Ireland. Thus, Ireland has sold out to global economy by falling for the temptation of a modern lifestyle which, in fact, deprives it of its cultural and spiritual identity and wholeness. Previously, Jim Sheridan exemplified concerns about the cultural and national Irish identity in terms of the family such as in his films In the Name of the Father, and The Field.

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The motif of the dysfunctional family is a symbolic cliché for the perceived postcolonial state of Ireland. The absent mother represents the mother figure that is Ireland, based on the traditional allegoric representation of Ireland as a mother.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[24]<!--[endif]--> Moreover, the women are the guardians of the traditional travelling lifestyle and insist on keeping to the life on the roads. Thus Kathleen, with her name she will recall associations with Cathleen Ní Houlihain, the allegory for Ireland, insists on the necessity to keep old traditions, a sense of community and collective identity. This collective identity is constituted and demonstrated through the gathering around the campfire, music and dance. The bodily ritual of the dance lets John take part in the community he had already refuted and helps him come to terms with the loss of his wife. Through his journey west, he has to realise the importance, and also the support “the old ways” can offer as well as the extent of the alienation from his own background he experienced through a settled lifestyle. Just as the horse is the more adequate means of transport on the way into the land, into the west, so is the old lifestyle of the travellers a necessary requisite for a spiritually rich life, in touch with ethnic and collective identity, and, eventually, the development of the full human potential. The portrayal of the non-sedentary population is thus a metonymic critical inquiry into the state of Irish identity and suggests a return to rural and unalienated, premodern values. This is a statement against the perceived threat posed by globalisation and an imported urban culture. Coupled with the idea presented in the film of the power of narratives to have impact on the real world, it is a confident attempt to challenge an uncritical attitude toward modernity.

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Gadjo Dilo:

Gadjo Dilo, “crazy stranger”, by Tony Gatlif, who is of Algerian and Romany descent, draws on common narrative genres such as the quest story and the gypsy laddy, the latter narrative scheme being particularly popular and common in British and Irish narrative ballads.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[25]<!--[endif]--> The film simultaneously subverts these structures and thus refuses the expected resolution and return of the gadjo to his place of origin while the constructed nature of collective identities is explored by exposing them for their artificiality. Simultaneously, it is an exploration into the negotiation of individual identity through the collective group identity of the Romany. Gadjo Dilo is the third of so far four films in which Gatlif portrays aspects of gypsy life, being preceded by the 1982 feature Les Princes and the 1993 Latcho Drom, an exploration into the musical practice of Romanies, and susceded by the 2001 feature Vengo.

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In the first instance, the regional and national, the familiar and the foreign, are introduced linguistically in a voice over recital of phrases in a number of languages. This places the film at the intersection of the languages that make up Europe and guarantee a reading which is relevant to viewers of most European countries at the same time as reaching out beyond its immediate French/Romanian context. As such, the film has pan-European and transnational, if not universal, stance. At the same time, this voice over stresses both the similarity and the dissimilarities, the possibility of translation of the story, as the phrases, into a number of national and regional idioms, the universal nature of the story, but at the same time the intrinsic difference in collective identities in Europe due to the linguistic fragmentation – a fragmentation in which each European country and people share and which may give them a sense of common ground. It also points towards the importance of language as a marker for collective identities and their role to segment the insider from the outsider.

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As in Into the West, questions of identity are elaborated symbolically through a problematic family background. Stéphane is on the way to find out about his dead father who he had been estranged from. This has also alienated him from his own place and is suggested as the reason for his decision to head for Romania. He meets Izidor, an old gypsy, who has just lost his own son to the prison. Stéphane becomes a substitute son for Izidor and Izidor a father figure for Stéphane. The symbolism of the family nucleus is further exploited when, after Izidor's and his sons death, and Stéphane attempt to take his own father’s place in recording the music, he emancipates himself and establishes his own identity which is developed, maintained and intrinsically linked to the Romany community. Another parallel use of imagery to Into the West is that of the road which yet again is situated at the very beginning of the film, suggestive of a road to be travelled in life, an origin, an aim and the space between. Additionally, we are again presented with the significant role of dance, music and ritual for the establishment and preservation of collective identity, but also as the gateway of emotional involvement in a strange community. It is through music that Stéphane first accomplishes to establish communication with the Romanes and Romanian speaking gypsy community. At the end of the film stands the image of Stéphane’s integration in this community through the denunciation of recorded versions of Romany music and his performance of the ritual dance at the graveside. Both mourning for the loss of his father and Izidor, he celebrates the freedom of a newly found independent identity, the freedom from the father figure.

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The establishment of collective identities through alterity in this film is marked by a reversal of roles: Stéphane is the person on the road, while the Romanies are in fact settled. He is the other, the chicken thief, the crazy outsider, the dirty stranger who is to be mistrusted by all means by the Romany community in whose midst he suddenly finds himself. He is just as disconcerted in the role of the outsider to the village as the villagers are to find him in their midst. The viewer, through Stéphane’s point of view, sees the other as the self. The viewer is thus presented with the prejudices generally voiced against Romanies from just that group against the self, Stéphane. Through the use of ironic knowledge, i.e. the play on the knowledge of these prejudices which are only known to the viewer, but not to the diegetic characters, these very prejudices are exposed as relative and constructs of an attempt to assert a collective identity against an intruder to this identity. The other is thus imaged as a necessary component in the definition of the self. However, Stéphane is eventually successfully integrated into the Romany community whereas this is not the case for the Romanies in the Romanian environment who are eventually driven from their homes and village.

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The peculiarity of perspective of this film is instigated by the establishment of subjectivity and point of view shots from Stéphane’s perspective. The other eye becomes our eye. We are reciprocally enabled to judge and revise familiar processes of marginalisation during identity generation. This subversion of standpoints creates an intrinsic critical distance which then is the predisposition to engage with the very different lifestyle were are consecutively presented with.

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Aitken isolates six recurrent motifs in European cinema originating from and inspired by the necessity to deal with this contemporary crisis of identity.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[26]<!--[endif]--> Each of these motifs is covered by at least one of the four films which may be considered as an indication for their relevance in the context of problematic collective identities. Heimat, Into the West, and Carmen fit Aitken’s first category, the motif complex of “Expression of anxieties about national identities” as well as his second category, “Affirmation of particular national identities”. Into the West additionally can be considered as an example for his third category, “Segmentation of national and supra-national identities”, here in terms of the colonial. Gadjo Dilo and Into the West are actualisations of his fourth category, “Representation of an ambivalent relationship between the individual and the local or national” and Gadjo Dilo is additionally an example of his fifth category, “The revival of marginal identities within nations”. Finally, I would add a sixth category to this complex of motifs brought about by an increasingly uncertain sense of collective identity, the re-evaluation of existing identities which is a category Heimat, Into the West, and Carmen would neatly occupy.(elaboration for article possible)

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The different representations of non sedentary characters discussed here illustrate four different endeavours in approaching questions of identity. While Carmen attempts through a metanarrative effort to reassess Spanish cultural identity and liberate it from its foreign, specifically French determinants, the gypsy character of Apollonia in Heimat undermines notions of a simplistic equation of Heimat with belonging, homely bliss and unproblematic regional and national identity. It achieves to question the very possibility of identity and belonging to an integrated whole as such. It thus effectively subverts an unproblematic understanding of the whole series as a portrayal of an unalienated sense of place at the heart of German national identity. In Into the West, the portrayal of the travellers who take centre stage in the film is a symbolic site for a rhetoric of national values and threatened national and cultural identity in Ireland as such, an ideologically tainted argument where a statement concerning “true” features of “real” Irishness are confidently exemplified through the representation of the old travelling lifestyle which is metonymically linked to a pre-industrial, rural and pre-colonial Irish identity. Finally, Gadjo Dilo moves away from issues of national identity to a universal notion of individual identity through the narrative scheme of a quest story. In Stéphane’s quest for the Romanian gypsy singer, we are confronted with ever shifting perspectives between self and other which undermines successfully the validity of the these very notions by exposing their mutual dependendy and relativity.

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In terms of perspective, narration and point of view, Romanies and other non-sedentary characters are presented through external imaging. Their representation reveals that they do not assume the role of a focalising or narrating subject. Neither is the viewer invited to assume their perspective. Instead, each portrayal discussed here is characterised by presenting Romanies as objects of the cinematic gaze originating from a non-gypsy character rather than creating subjectivity centred on a gypsy character. The film discourse, the filmic eye of the camera, originates from the sedentary population. Presentations of gypsies are thus functionalised for an inquiry into the identity of the gadjo, the non-gypsy characters and either their individual or their collective identity. In this way, collective European identites are asserted by perspectivically subjugating the foreign, and thus establishing a dominance within a peripheral film discourse. This conclusion bears implications for the processes, means and functions of representations of other marginal groups as the practice of converting a peripheral discourse to a dominant one through representing Romanies as objects of a subjective, non-Romany gaze may also be present in the representation of other marginal groups.

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