Ambiguities of the Audiovisual: Gypsy Characters in Feature Films (1895 - 1950)

Research questions

What traditions of pictorial narrative and spectacle do the cinematic representations of Gypsy characters 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?
How do the motifs, characters, plot patterns and genre conventions of feature films contribute either to the construction of antigypsyist stereotypes or to their criticism and thus to the demonstration of the agency of Roma and Sinti? What is the significance of actors and showmen (keyword: travelling cinema) from the minority in this context?
 What role do feature films with Gypsy characters play in the intertwined history of antigypsyism, anti-Semitism 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?

Co-operations

with other projects: Interfaces concern, among other things, the connection between image narrative and stereotype or iconography and scenography (subprojects 3 and 1), interactions between the spectacle and the cinema of attraction as well as film and opera (subprojects 3 and 2), relations between cinematic and scientific descriptions of Gypsies by others (subprojects 3 and 4) or relations between cinematic descriptions by others and journalistic self-descriptions of Rom*nja (subprojects 3 and 5).
(sub-projects 3 and 4) or relations between filmic descriptions of others and journalistic self-descriptions of Roma (sub-projects 3 and 5) as well as the semantics of exclusion and elimination in feature films and in realpolitik (sub-projects 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: ‘Transmedial Image Narrative and Stereotype’ in Flensburg, organised by TP 1 (Bell/UIz) and TP 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

OBJECTIVE 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 Roma and Sinti on the other.

OBJECTIVE 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