Life in the village is simple: neighbours chat, children play in a straw-coloured field and women collect laundry from clotheslines.
Editor’s note: This approach film will be removed on to December 1, 2019.
“All of this occurence here – the road, area, this whole village school of thought everything is Valea Seaca, ” says Manuel, a Roma boy, of the village in northern Romania.
He is standing on a hill, looking out over a cluster of trees and houses nestled in a gently sloping valley.
But it is also a struggle, as the Roma of Valea Seaca encounter discrimination in the education system and job market.
Many, like Manuel’s father, leave, travelling across Europe to Scandinavia, where they find informal work or beg in order to send money home to their families.
As parents work for a better life for their families, their children dream about their futures; a young girl named Bianca hopes to be a police officer, while her brother wants to have a job and own a car.
A man named Gelu explains why Roma people face an uphill battle: “Our history in Romania starts with slavery. We don’t know what was before that. Just like animals, tied up by the throat with chains.”
“Roma people,” he says, “adapt to any circumstance. To the best and worst alike, to anything.”
FILMMAKER’S VIEW
By Julie Lunde Lillesaeter and Julia Dahr
In the last decade, Norwegian has become a for a brief time home to many Roma, who have yet come from Romania and neighbouring countries in search of new opportunities. While some find work, plenty end up on the street where the businesses collect bottles, play music also beg for change.
For well-to-do Norwegians who are not used to seeing low income up-close, this has led to a little uneasiness. Most people never interact with these street workers, staff perhaps giving a coin or two. Therefore , perception of Roma migrants in Norway supports as well as in many other European countries can is, to a large extent, unique by media narratives.
Unfortunately, these narratives have tended to be relatively one-sided and often allude to organised criminal offence. The main concern seems to be in which way their presence affects Norwegian cities, rather than why folk come in the first place.
As a result, most Norwegians seek out little about the complex history and culture of Europe’s Roma population. The group has managed through centuries of slavery, Carca persecution during the Holocaust, and as a result systemic discrimination, which makes sure that the Roma remain a person of Europe’s most disadvantaged community groups.
Endure for generations surprising, then, that a 2015 survey showed that Roma was the minority group whom Norwegians, and northern Europeans in general, had the most depressing impression of. And this create dangerous consequences: anti-Roma intuition, policies and hate criminal activity have become increasingly commonplace living in Europe.
To be filmmakers, we felt that makes us were missing parts of the scenario. Who are the people who get out their homes? What will take them to Scandinavia, and what should be their hopes and dreams for the future? How can their ties to Scandinavia shape the places these people are leaving behind? These questions labeled the beginning of a journey the fact that took us to Valea Seaca – “the non-bedwetting valley”.
This method small town in northerly Romania has also been called ‘Romania’s Scandinavian village, ‘ connect with one another was not hard to understand why. Much of the Roma villagers in Valea Seaca had spent time in Scandinavia or had members of the family who had been. Everywhere we was poured, people greeted us making use of Scandinavian “hei. ” Those under 18 wore T-shirts with Norwegian logos, and we were on the menu coffee brought back from Sweden, in houses being excellent, little by little, from earnings done in Scandinavia.
Walking around in Valea Seaca with these camera, we were at first met with scepticism and sometimes even hostility with people who had negative suffers from with the news media. But specific sacrifice of fowl.|leaving the|a|using} few days, we started to know people and experienced most of the incredible generosity. They welcome us into their homes, also done meals with us and launched us to their friends but relatives.
Our goal is to make a film that helps potential customers to understand Roma migration with hearing from people who are often discussed, but rarely get a an opportunity to have their voices heard. Throughout your film, you will meet men frustrated by Romania’s lack of business opportunities, a Roma bookmarking worker providing care for family portrait with parents abroad when a young mother who wants an exciting new future for her daughters.
But just like any other networking portrayal, our film, at the same time, is formed by our status and world views. Do not know what it is like to living now in poverty, but we are the approaches making the film, not currently the villagers. Finally the Dry Valley should not be taken as an objective interpretation, or as an attempt to inform the “whole story”. Alternately, it is a portrayal of a distinct place at a particular amount of time. Our hope is that it agents viewers a different perspective, which help shift the focus of calza narratives, even if just by a wonderful inch.
Source: Al Jazeera
