Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the South Slavic films focusing on the Roma and the way these narratives uncover systemic injustices affecting not only marginal groups but society in general. It further discusses how alternative viewpoints are established while simultaneously redefining aesthetic practices.

Paper long abstract:

The year 1967 marks a tide of political and societal upheavals in the former Yugoslavia, including a series of provocative films known as "the Black Wave." Petrović's I Even Met Happy Gypsies is among the most visible and in this paper it serves as a matrix for illustrating the pertinent questions concerning this minority group in South Slavic film. I aim to demonstrate that this thematic congruity in an array of otherwise dissimilar films is not accidental and that, taken hand in hand with the extraneous socio-political factors, it opens up spaces of signification that go well beyond the reach of individual films. As a theoretical framework I apply ideas by the French sociologist Edgar Morin, in particular his 1956 work The Cinema or the Imaginary Man where he argues that photograph and film, although mere reflections of the material world, nonetheless restore its presence while opening up a possibility for our own projections of meaning. Film cannot be disassociated from the material man claims Morin, and his theory is particularly suitable since the documentary/anthropological aspect is prominent in films concerning the Roma. The paper investigates how representation of this group is employed in cinematic terms as a mechanism for establishing alternative viewpoints while simultaneously redefining aesthetic practices. It further discusses the ways these narratives uncover systemic injustices and ideologies affecting not only marginal groups but society in general. Other directors discussed include Makavejev, Šijan, Kusturica, Paskaljević, Brešan and Tanović.