Webinar:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=644167516204777&extid=jco0el9zfaUBEu8m

Lecture:

Webinar:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=644167516204777&extid=jco0el9zfaUBEu8m

Abstract: 

This lecture aims to answer the following underpinning questions: how could such a transnational identity as the Roma operate effectively in highly de-centralized political systems? How do different dimensions of the Roma identity intersect and interact: ethnicity, social class and ideology? What are the limits of ethno-communitarian logics of participation in post-racial societies? Which kind of commonalities shall we search for to connect the Roma communities with the non-Roma? To answer these questions, the lecture reconstructs the genesis of over thirty years’ debates on Roma rights tracking from the studies on exclusion and discrimination to the new trends on self-definition and self-determination. Conceptually this lecture will expose the nexus among some key notions that will trace the plot of this theoretical and political labyrinth: “pariah” (Hancock, 1987), “antigypsyism” (Cortés and Markus, 2019), “identity politics” (van Baar and Kocze, 2020), “multitude and commonality” (Hard and Negri, 2004; 2009).

Bio:

Ismael Cortés hold a PhD in International Studies of Peace, Conflicts and Development by the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace at Universitat Jaume I. He has been a researcher at the University of Nottingham, the International University of Andalusia and the Carlos III University. He has been an expert consultant in the OSCE – ODHIR project “Turning words into action. Combating anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance (2015-2018)”. He has worked as a policy analyst for think tanks such as the Center for European Policy Studies and the Open Society European Policy Institute. He was a postdoc felow of the Roma Studies Program at Central European University. He coordinated the book Dimensions of Antigypsyism in Europe. Currently he serves as an MP in the Spanish Parliament.

Lecture:

Webinar: 

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/347769766635647/ 

Abstract:
When fast sailing ships boosted the European colonial project and the slave trade, within Europe, in the Principalities Wallachia and Moldova (territories of nowadays Romania), Romani people had already been coerced into a system of chattel enslavement since 1385 or perhaps earlier. Neither prisoners of war, nor victims of pirates, Roma were enslaved and exploited from one generation to another for five centuries. The State, boyars, and the Orthodox Church enslaved Roma for their distinctive and essential skills and justified exploitation through cultural and race prejudice.

In this lecture, I describe the horrors of Roma slavery and the tactics used by enslavers to justify and legitimized oppression, economic exploitation, and brutal violence, including rape, murder, and family separation. I engage with the global scholarly literature on slavery and reparations through a Roma lens, suggesting possible ways to ensure reparations, a critical element in the quest for repair, healing, and accountability for state wrongs.

Bio:
Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache is a justice activist and scholar from Romania, director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights’ Roma Program, and a Harvard instructor. Her research and teaching focus on the history and manifestations of anti-Ramani racism as well as the global history of race and racism. From 2005 to 2012, Dr. Matache was the Executive Director of Romani CRISS, a human rights organization that defends the rights of Roma. In 2012, she was awarded a Hauser postdoctoral fellowship at the FXB Center, where she founded the University’s first and only Roma Program. In 2017, with Jacqueline Bhabha and Andrzej Mirga, she co-edited Realizing Roma Rights, an investigation of anti-Roma racism in Europe. Also, along with Jacqueline Bhabha, Caroline Elkins, and Walter Johnson, Matache is the co-editor of Time for reparations. Addressing state responsibility for collective injustice, a forthcoming volume exploring the issue of reparations across a broad range of historical and geographic contexts and academic disciplines. She completed her Master’s in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and her doctoral degree in Political Sciences from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/1995165164067234/videos/3339559229425228

Abstract:
The lecture will define the antigypsyism as a core concept of Critical Romani Studies, will explore the meaning of antigypsyism nowadays, its intellectual roots and manifestations. The concept is controversial and there are still aspects to be agreed upon by scholars, activists and academics: terminology, definition, features, its origins, manifestations and how it could be measured. The clarification of terminology is crucial as there are competing terms used to designate the hate and exclusion of Roma by majority society: Romaphobia, anti-Romaism, anti-Roma racism, anti-tziganismus, anti-tiganism, antigypsyism etc. Should there be a specific term to designate the oppression and discrimination against Roma? Or should we use rather a more universal term such is racism against Roma? What are the origins of Roma exclusion and discrimination? What are the most common manifestations of antigypsyism nowadays? How to measure antigypsyism? These will be the guiding questions of the lecture.

Bio:
Dr. Iulius Rostas is a Visiting Professor at the National School of Political Science and Administration (Romania). Between 2016 and 2019 he served as Chair of Romani Studies and Assistant Professor at Central European University and founded the Romani Studies Program at CEU. Previously, he was an Affiliated Fellow with the Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, Senior Fellow with the Open Society Foundations Roma Initiatives Office and Visiting Lecturer at Corvinus University of Budapest. He has worked for the Open Society Foundations, the European Roma Rights Center and the Government of Romania and consulted the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the World Bank, the European Commission, USAID, the Council of Europe and the Roma Education Fund. Dr Rostas is the editor of “Ten Years After: A History of Roma School Desegregation in Central and Eastern Europe” (CEU Press, 2012) and in 2011 he published “Social Inclusion or Exclusion: the Rights of Persons Living with HIV in Moldova” (Cartier Publishing, 2011). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Critical Romani Studies journal (crs.ceu.edu). His latest book “A Task for Sisyphus: Why Policies towards Roma in Europe Are Failing” was published by CEU Press in 2019.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/2752853231702175

Lecture:

Webinar: 

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/705687573385932

Abstract:
Was communism in reality the egalitarian regime it promised to be, that allowed Roma to develop similar to the other citizens? I raise this question in light of my many interactions with members of Roma communities from Romania who claim that the best regime for our communities was communism. To be certain, their subjective experience may support this assumption, but in terms of communist State policies, what was the approach on Roma? Were Roma treated differently as compared to previous political regimes? To begin to answer these questions, in this lecture we will analyze the public policies of the communist regime for Romanian-Roma as a case study for the Roma experience under communism. We will look at documents from the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives to understand the preoccupation of the Socialist Republic of Romania regime with the Roma and we will explore how Roma activism was possible under such an oppressive system.

Bio:

Dr. Ciprian Necula it is a visiting professor and coordinator of the Masters Program on Romani Studies at the Political Science Faculty of SNSPA/Bucharest. He teaches ethnicity, masculinity and public policies on Roma. He started his career as a human rights activist under the supervision and mentorship of Nicolae Gheorghe, using innovative tools to address the stereotypes and prejudices against Roma. He has been a journalist, a leader of public campaigns, a promoter of social-economic projects, a political analyst, co-founder of a social enterprise, the leader of a Roma NGO, a consultant for international organizations, a debater in public media, and the initiator of the Roma Culture Museum in Bucharest. Currently, Ciprian Necula it is leading the Aresel Platform in Romania and Roma Education Fund as an Executive Chair. Necula holds a PhD in sociology.

Lecture: 

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/2412445202396593

Abstract:

This lecture provides a broad overview of the history of the Romani movement. The year 2020 marked 76 years since the liquidation of the Zigeunerlager at Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 2, 1944. Roma Holocaust Memorial Day was recognized by the European Parliament in 2015 and by Polish Sejm in 2011. Since the establishment of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma led by Romani Rose in 1982 the struggle for recognition reached a critical phase. The Roma Holocaust became an essential part of our history, it also provided a foundation for the Romani movement. The lecture tells the history of the Romani movement from an insider perspective, from the viewpoint of the prime actors who played an active role in shaping and writing the political history—of those sitting at the tables and negotiating with decision-makers—not from an outside scholarly perspective. The lecture presents ‘our’ part of the story and therefore focuses on ‘our’ vision of the movement, on actors and audiences, on objectives and what we have reached, on mobilization we have passed through, who we are now after several decades of being in the movement and where we still aim to arrive.

Bio:

Andrzej Mirga, a Polish Roma, an ethnologist/anthropologist, analyst and activist. Until December 2019 he chaired the Roma Education Fund Board, Budapest. Between 2006 and 2013 he headed the Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues at the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in Warsaw, Poland. A long-term associate of the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER), the U.S.-based nongovernmental mediating organization with headquarter in Princeton, New Jersey (until 2006). He has also served as an expert at the Committee of Experts on Roma and Travellers of the Council of Europe, and its chair, later joined the Poland’s Common Commission of the Government and National and Ethnic Minorities, as well as, the High-Level Group on Labour Market and Disadvantaged Ethnic Minorities (European Commission, 2005–2007). He has taught at various universities and has published widely since the 1990s.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/345142280038640

Abstract:

The history of Romani political activism is traditionally narrated from a heterosexual, masculine perspective, with the role of men being magnified, whilst the accomplishments of women and of people of different sexualities, becoming a rather diminished, or even invisible matter. This lecture will focus on how intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological framework has been utilized by Romani feminist and LGBT scholars and activists. The lecture will employ theoretical frameworks and terminology from critical race studies, to sharpen the gendered racialization of Romani women through historical narratives. The aim of the lecture is to underpin the current manifestations of intersectional discrimination, in other words, as it is named by Romani activists, the “double exclusion” and domination by both Romani patriarchy and non-Romani political and economic regimes.

Bio:

Angéla Kóczé is an Assistant Professor, Chair of Romani Studies, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. In 2013–2017, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC, USA. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters with various international presses, including Palgrave Macmillan, Ashgate, Routledge and CEU Press, as well as several thematic policy papers related to social inclusion, gender equality, social justice and civil society. In 2013, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, honoured Kóczé with the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award for her interdisciplinary research approach, which combines community engagement and policymaking with in-depth participatory research on the situation of the Roma. She is a co-editor of The Romani Women’s Movement: Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2019, with Violetta Zentai, Jelena Jovanović and Enikő Vincze) and The Roma and their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2020, with Huub van Baar

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/1654804474690858/

Abstract:

Raising the question of when can we start talking about Romani Performing Arts beyond Romani performers and Romani characters, help us build an international reading of the crucial variety of national examples of Romani performers from Turkey to USA, in a crossed chronology. Connecting influences of the different contexts we learn about the capacity of Romani artistic agency to break genre limits and adapt the public discourses of alterity. A real trip from the dawn of modernity to the challenges of XXI Century, with examples including the Romani Turkish Puppet tradition, the Spanish Golden Age Theater and the XIX Century Teatro Gitanesco, the Royal masquerades in France, the Roma Slave Jesters in Walachia and Moldavia, the work with animals in Roma circuses and bullfighting, fairs and carnivals, the theatricality of different Roma religious traditions, the experiences of XIX and XX century international exhibitions and the relation between institutionalised and independent theatre companies. Though the remains of texts and the imagery created for and associated with Roma performing arts artists, we reflect on the space that theatrical fiction and representation might have in the questioning of XXI Century Romani identities.

Bio:

Miguel Ángel Vargas, Art Historian and Theater Director (1978) Spain

As independent researcher and artist, Vargas combines flamenco, theater and romani history as experienced-based themes of his artistic and academic inquiry. He has worked internationally as an actor, director, set designer, production manager and even opera technician among other roles in performing arts during his 20 years of career. He has collaborated with several academic institutions such as Central Saint Martins College of Arts of London, as coordinator of the work experience of their Performing Arts MA; member of Pendaripén, interdisciplinary research group on History of the Romani People, of the University of Seville and has participated in several seminars on Critical Romani Studies of Central European University.

Publications:
– Catalog of the exhibition Camarón de la Isla by Lita Cabellut. Aufbau Haus, Germany. 2012.
– Co-curator of Theater section of RomArchive. Kulturstiftung des Bundes – German Cultural Federal Fundación, 2017
– Performing Gitanidad (Romaniness) On Stage, HowlRound Theatre commons, marzo, 2019.
– A political reading of “Flamenco Gitano” in an international Roma context. 1963 to 2010 Roma in European Societies Grant. Central European University, 2019 (in progress)
– Museological plan for the Andaloussian Museum of Flamenco de Andalucía, Junta de Andalucía,. 2020

Lecture:

Webinar: 

https//www.facebook.com/watch/?v=807603929782373

Abstract:

This lecture will offer an overview of Romani Dance history exploring the multi-faceted traditions, innovations and influences of Romani Dance around the globe. We will focus on influential Roma dancers, companies, and performances, and also explore grassroots performers and choreographers. While there won’t be enough time to have a comprehensive account of all Romani dance, what the lecture will strive for is to pull together mini vignettes that will offer the student insight into the diverse background of Romani dance history. A wide range of materials, including digitised film and photographs, artworks, graphics, dance notation and texts as well as new materials created especially for the lecture, will be used in a creative fashion. The lecture will be engaging and allow participants to have time to reflect and define what Romani Dance means to them.

Research Interests:

Dance; Flamenco; Dance History; Roma Community; Cultural Heritage; Digital Technologies; Participatory Research, Sociology, Intersectionality, Gender, Human Rights, Migration

Bio:

Rosamaria is a dancer and choreographer, Dance Historian and Critic, Roma Scholar, Sociologist, Flamenco Historian and Peace Activist who graduated from UW-Madison and went on to complete her Master’s in Dance History and Criticism from UNM-Albuquerque (USA). Her PhD is in Sociology with a focus on Roma women, intersectionality, dialogic feminism and communicative methodologies. Rosamaria is a professional dancer, choreographer, curator and qualified teacher, who has lived and danced in various parts of the world and collaborated with many Flamenco greats and other leaders in the Dance field. She has taught throughout Europe and the US at places like UW-Madison, UIUC, Boston Conservatory, Brown University and at various other places in Germany, Spain and Turkey. She is a dance writer who makes regular contributions to Bachtrack Magazine and Flamenco News having also danced with Protein Dance Company in the UK. Rosamaria is involved in various EU funded projects which aim to make education accessible to vulnerable groups and ethnic minorities and sits on various Boards: Roma Coventry Project (UK), Drom Kotar Mestipen Roma Women’s Association (Spain) and the Early Dance Circle (UK). At the moment she is a Research fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research based in the UK. She is also an independent artist, dancer, curator and teacher who has organised various festivals and exhibitions. Her dance films have screened in the UK, US, Colombia, Mexico, Greece, Cyprus and Germany and her latest documentary won best documentary from the UK in 2016. She has started her own production company, RosaSenCis Film Production Co., which worked on the Society for Dance Research Oral History Project. The company aims to create dance films and documentaries that capture stories and reflect embodied traditions that might otherwise be lost. She has also managed major EU-Funded projects and local City of Culture Partnership projects. Rosamaria collaborates closely with the University of Barcelona’s Community of Researchers for Excellence for All (CREA). She sits on academic Journals as an editorial assistant and those include the Journal for Embodied Practices and International Journal of Romani Studies.

Lecture: 

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/404990710542752

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/196661198596945/

Abstract:
What is Romani music? Balkan brass bands, zurla & tapan music, lăutar music, Manouche/Sinti/Gypsy jazz, and flamenco. These genres are just a few distinct musical repertoires that could fall under the broad definition of Romani Music. Music composed, played, and danced to by Romani performers is a diverse set of practices that are difficult to unite through musicological analysis; There is no “Gypsy scale,” rhythmic pattern, or harmonic structure shared by the vast repertoires of Romani Music. Romani musicians also engaged in cross-cultural exchange with local musical styles. In this lecture, we will explore the diverse universe of Romani Music as well as the role of music in fostering awareness of Romani people and their history.

Bio:
Dr. Petra Gelbart is a Romani educator, scholar, and musician. She was first introduced to Romani music and language by her family while growing up in Czechoslovakia. She earned her Ph.D. in musicology/ethnomusicology at Harvard University and went on to co-found the Initiative for Romani Music at New York University. Her research interests include interethnic communication, the psychology of music, the Holocaust, and institutional ethnography. She has taught courses at the university level on music, the Holocaust. Dr Gelbart is also a board-certified music therapist specialized in rehabilitative and developmental therapy.
In addition to practicing in New York City, she works with Czech foster and adoptive families raising Romani children.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/1751171531705470/

Abstract:
This lecture offers a review of Roma knowledge production and what has been termed a critical turn in the academic field of Romani Studies (Bogdan et al, 2018). What counts as ‘knowledge production’, in this context, and what makes it specifically Roma? Further, what does a ‘critical turn’ involve? Whilst it is true that people and communities known as Roma, Sinti, Travellers, Gypsies have been discussed in University curriculum and academic projects over many years now, it is only more recently that the discipline has started to be ‘seen through Romani eyes’ (Le Bas and Acton, 2010). This post-colonial shift, in both perspective and practice, is, it will be argued, long overdue and, for the most part, welcomed. However, it would also be fair to say that this paradigmatic shift was not welcomed by everyone (Matras, 2017). Some scholars, often non-Roma, queried the nature and consequences of this alleged ‘critical turn’ leading to ‘the dangers of a closed society research paradigm’ (Stewart, 2017). There appears to be, at the heart of such debates, a philosophical and epistemological clash: the assumed values of truth, science and objectivity as opposed to assertions of propaganda, politics and subjectivity. This lecture offers comments on these matters. It will provide a trajectory of where we are now and how we came to be here. In what way might these debates need to be re-examined in light of broader decolonization efforts across North American and European Universities, as well as the work of Black Lives Matter and other campaigns? Topically, what does Roma knowledge production look like in times of COVID-19? And what might happen if our current conditions mean that the critical turn is derailed due to neoliberalism, populism and the far-right? The lecture will conclude by offering a roadmap of what such futures might hold. At heart of all of them there needs to be a narrative of Roma intellectual liberation and emancipation.

References:
Bogdan, M., Dunajeva, J., Junghaus, T., Kóczé, A., Rostas, I., Rövid, M., & Szilvasi, M. (2018). Introducing the New Journal Critical Romani Studies. Critical Romani Studies, 1(1), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.29098/crs.v1i1.19
Le Bas, Damian and Action, T. (eds) (2010) All Change! Romani Studies Through Romani Eyes, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
Matras, Y. (2017) From Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society to Romani Studies: Purpose and essence of a modern academic platform. Romani Studies 27(2): 113-123.
Stewart, M. (2017). Nothing about us without us, or the dangers of a closed-society research paradigm. Romani Studies 27(2): 125-146.

Bio:
Colin Clark is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of the West of Scotland. He is a first-generation University student and from a Scottish Traveller background. His PhD was undertaken at the University of Edinburgh (2001) where he was supervised by Professor Judith Okely. Colin’s academic and activist work for more than 25 years has been principally in the field of Romani, Refugee and Migration Studies. Colin sits on the Board of Directors of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights and is a Trustee of Romano Lav (Roma Voice). He also acts as an adviser to the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Traveller Movement and the Advisory Council for the Education of Romanies and Other Travellers. Recent publications include: Clark, C. (2020) ‘Stay or Go? Roma, Brexit and European Freedom of Movement’, Scottish Affairs, 29(3): 403-418; Clark, C. (1998) ‘For work, we came here to find work’: migrant Roma employment and the labour of language. In P. Beresford, & S. Carr (eds.), Social Policy First-Hand: An International Introduction to Participatory Social Welfare Bristol: Policy Press (p.107-117) and Clark, C. (2018). ‘Sites, welfare and ‘barefoot begging’: Roma and Gypsy/Traveller experiences of racism in Scotland’. In N. Davidson, M. Liinpaa, M. McBride, and S. Virdee (eds.), No Problem Here: Racism in Scotland Edinburgh: Luath Press (p.145-161). Colin occasionally tweets at: @profcolinclark

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/422252798946762/

Abstract:
Media has the power of representing the different concepts of our society such as race, gender, ethnicity, class and religion and also to contribute to their constructions. These representations are not innocent but they all reflect ideologies that construct these categories, and through them our own realities and society. Understanding the concept/the meaning/the image of Roma in society can not only show how Roma are positioned in society but it can also contribute to the better understanding of racism against Roma (Antigypsyism) and of the European discourse of racism and politics of diversity as well. In my lecture I will talk about how media research can contribute to challenge racism against Roma (Antigypsyism) and will show what role social media plays now in empowering Roma communities while deconstructing the negative image of Roma in society.

Bio:
She is a media theorist. Her main research interest is related to media representation, social media and identity, the modern forms of racism and the questions of diversity. She received her PhD from the Film, Media and Culture Theory Doctoral Program at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2018. She wrote her PhD Thesis about the media representation of the Roma in Hungary. The title of her Thesis: The Visible Stranger. She was the first postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University, in Germany (2019-2020). She was a visiting researcher at CEU Romani Studies Program in 2018. Prior to that she was a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2014-2017) and an assistant lecturer at the University of Pécs (2006-2013). She is a Fulbright Alumna and has done part of her PhD research at Columbia University in the City of New York. She is one of the founding editors of Critical Romani Studies journal. Besides her scholarly interest she studied journalism and film too, and worked as a journalist at different media organizations in Hungary.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanRomaInstituteERIAC/videos/695410244680198/

Abstract:
This lecture aims to introduce the participants to the milestones of Rromani literature’s history from its beginnings until nowadays. The lecture will familiarize participants with the phenomenology of the Romani literature, covering its evolution, marked both by opportunities for development as well as obstacles. We will explore and briefly analyze works of Rromani literature, highlighting its main writers, but especially its main themes. Analyzing the main topics explored by the Romani literature (racism, tragic history, family, knowledge, dignity, beauty, nature, freedom, love, hope, hate, sense of home, ethnic identity, Rromanipen, self-representation, self-esteem, otherness, ethnic stigma, imprisonment, Slavery, Holocaust/o Samudaripen etc.) the lecture aims to discover, together with the learners, and every time in a different way, the Rromano ethos transfigured in literature. We will observe how Romani literature transcribes Rroma patterns of thinking, their views about the world and the multiple ways the Rromani literature approaches the relationship of the Rroma with themselves and with Otherness. The scope of this lecture is to demonstrate that the literary works carry and transmit to the reader, the interior lives and lived experience of the Roma as well as to underline Romani literature’s contribution to the development of what we can call the new or the modern Rromanipen.

Bio:
Delia Grigore is a Romanian Romani writer, philologist, academic and Romani rights activist. As Senior Reader/Lecturer at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Rromani Language and Literature Section she researches, teaches and writes on Romani language and literature. Grigore is the President of the Association Rroma Center „Amare Rromentza.” As a specialist in ethnography, ethnology, ethnolinguistics, folklore, oral history, literature – especially in Rromology, Grigore has published extensively.

Lecture:

Webinar:

https://www.facebook.com/1995165164067234/videos/427978088258703/

Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2726833324239366&ref=watch_permalink

Katalin Bársony is an award-winning documentary director and executive director of the Budapest-based Roma media organization, and the CEO of the BAXT Films company, which creates films, social media campaigns, and other tools to promote Roma self-representation. She has used her deep understanding of minority issues and her expertise in sociology to create the first-ever documentary series on Roma communities around the world to be broadcast on a mainstream television channel (Duna Television Hungary). The »Mundi Romani – the World through Roma Eyes« series was broadcast monthly between 2007 and 2011 (forty-two episodes shot in twenty-eight countries) and won recognition worldwide for its innovative quality, cinematography and the untold stories the films uncovered. In 2010, the »Mundi Romani« series was awarded the UNESCO Prize for the Rapprochement of Cultures. Awards and nominations at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, the International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes (FIPA), the CIVIS Prize, etc., led to the creation of independent media campaigns, such as the »I’m a Roma Woman« campaign, and film projects, such as »Uprooted« (2011), nominated at the 8th Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival, and the upcoming documentary drama, »The 3Brothers«. Under Bársony’s direction, the Romedia Foundation created the »Buvero«, a two-week residential summer camp for young Roma women that focuses on media training. Each year 20 girls from three countries learn how to make films and produce new media content. Between 2013-2020 trained 116 Romani women at BUVERO methodology. In 2012, the Romedia organised the Budapest leg of »Requiem for Auschwitz« to commemorate Roma victims of Nazi terror. The program included a concert, a film festival and an art exhibition. Katalin Bársony is currently at work on a feature-length documentary films: »The 3Brothers« tells the story of a German Roma family torn apart by forced »repatriation« to Kosovo. The film is in post-production. »How far the Stars«, Barsony’s first feature length documentary is a co-production between BAXT Films and HBO Europe released in 2019 in 42 countries. The film follows a Roma composer and pianist who has created a new style of music that fuses traditional rhythms with contemporary Jazz. Katalin Bársony is a PHD student and completing her doctoral dissertation in communications and behavioral science. She is also a Miegunyah Fellow of the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Lecture: 

Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=234227798295425&ref=watch_permalink

André Raatzsch, born in 1978 in Ilmenau/Germany, has participated in numerous international exhibitions over the past few years, among them the first Roma Pavilion “Paradise Lost” at the Venice Biennial in 2007. Subsequently, he carried out several artistic and cultural projects, including “Rewritable Pictures,” which – as part of a studio work using participatory and artistic methods – questions, expands, and critically reflects on pictorial representations in private Roma image archives. Raatzsch has contributed several essays and exhibitions on the representation of European Sinti and Roma, taking into account photography, photo archives and the accompanying discourse on the politics of photography.
André Raatzsch has been head of the documentation department at the Documentation and Cultural Center for German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg since 2016.

Lecture: 

Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=171298541219809&ref=watch_permalink