Majic (2013) reports on the work of Lidija Mirkovic, a documentary filmmaker who wants to present through her work a picture of the Rroma beyond certain foreign stereotypes. Mirkovic has interviewed countless Rroma in months of work and documented their everyday lives. She receives regular visits from journalists from Germany who are interested in her work. Usually she asks them two questions. First, what he or she wants to know about the slums and secondly, what he or she actually knows himself about Rroma. With this second question Mirkovic goes to the core of the issue. Her intention is to create new images that can compete with the entrenched stereotypes. Besides stereotypes, the essence of the slums lies at centre of the film “slumdogs”. Majic states: “What in the West is either glorified or branded a part of gypsy culture, is actually the result of unbearable misery. This reality cannot be banished away from one’s own doorstep, by simply declaring its consequences to be the nature of a particular ethnic group.” The film critically examines this ethnicisation of poverty as a self-chosen way of life, and take a look into the slums, not in a third world countries, but the middle of Europe.

Source:

• Majic, Danijel (2013) Die Slums in der Mitte Europas. In: Frankfurter Rundschau vom 13.5.2013. 

Please follow and like us: