| Regia: John Paskievich Interpreti
principali: Vari
Durata: 95 min 31 sec
Moved by a sense of outrage, David Scheffel, a Canadian anthropologist, is determined to
help the impoverished Roma (Gypsies) rebuild their community in Svinia, a village in
Eastern Slovakia. So-called "white" Svinia is a picturesque, typical Slovak
village with well-kept homes, gardens, a store and a school. Just some 300 meters past the
last "white" home is "black" Svinia. The Gypsies of Svinia offers an
unprecedented look into the everyday lives of the Roma. In a life characterized by decay
and despair, the Roma dwell in squalid tenement blocks and in one-room huts made of sticks
and mud where they live without clean water or sewage facilities and with little hope of
employment. Many "whites" of Svinia, whose homes and gardens are regularly
burglarized by the desperate Roma, have lost all patience and sympathy. In terrible fits
of rage, some praise Hitler's policy of trying to exterminate them. The Gypsies of Svinia
is a portrait of the Svinian Roma community and the firm resolve of Scheffel and the Roma
to make things better. Throughout Eastern Europe, the painful transition from communism to
democracy has relegated the Roma to the farthest, most grotesque margins of society. |