Notebook section of this issue of Roma Rights opens a discussion on Romani identity. In the article, Erik Rutherford offers the view that Tony Gatlif's film Gadjo Dilo has had and will continue to have a positive impact.
Contributions to the Romani identity discussions are welcome. Erik Rutherford Erik Rutherford is a writer living in Paris. He studied literature at McGill and Oxford Universities. She said she had and recounted the following anecdote. A New York colleague of hers, himself a rights activist, had sent her a message that summer, declaring rapturously that he had seen an "extraordinary" film by a French director of Algerian and Romani descent.
It was, of course, Gadjo Dilo, and he believed its broad distribution would be the single most effective thing that could be done to promote Roma rights in Europe. Dimitrina obtained the video cassette and invited a group of Roma and non-Roma to view it in her Budapest office.
One day in June, around fifteen people gathered and sat through the film in silence. It was the tale of a young Parisian named Stephane who, having embarked on a sentimental quest to find a Gypsy singer named Nora Luca, much beloved by his deceased father, ends up living for several months in a Romani settlement somewhere outside Bucharest.
Stephane carries a recording of Nora Luca's voice, hoping that someone will recognize it. Late one night, cold and with nowhere to sleep, he encounters Izidor, an elderly Romani musician, drunk and declaiming theatrically against the Romanian authorities who have imprisoned his son Ardjani. Izidor welcomes this disoriented gadjo non-Rom as some form of godsend, and claiming to know the voice on the cassette, leads Stephan back to his village.
