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The Gypsies of Svinia
(The Gypsies of Svinia, John Paskievich, Canada, 19981
The Gypsies of Svinia begins and ends with images of a blind girl sitting among her friends singing, alone and a capella, a delicately beautiful but untranslated song. These two framing scenes provide a key to the ninety minutes of intervening film. One of the most vulnerable and damaged persons in this scorned Slovakian community cannot suppress a sadly lifeaffirming song.
What impressed Canadian filmmaker John Paskievich most in his visits to Slovakia was 'the Gypsies' crazy affirmation of life despite the terrible, terrible conditions.' That's the impression he wanted to convey, not just in the irrepressible Romani music (which could have become a cliché) but in the little details of their everyday life. While the indomitable human spirit of the Romanies is implied in the film rather than underlined, 'the terrible, terrible conditions' are all too horribly obvious. The Romanies of Svinia live in filthy huts made of sticks and mud or in scandalously decayed apartment ghettoes built on a drained swamp on the outskirts of town. Toilets, sinks, stoves, furniture, sheets or blankets, eating utensils, windows are almost non-existent. Most of the children are dirty and inadequately dressed, if at all. They play in the mud and detritus; they swim in their only source of drinking water befouled by excrement and agricultural chemicals. Scorned in school, excluded from jobs, hated by their 'white' neighbours, beaten and persecuted by the police, the Romanies resort to theft and scavenging in the local garbage dump to supplement their welfare payments.
Dr. David Scheffel of the College of the Caribou in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada came across this community while leading a group of anthropology students on a research trip through Eastern Europe. Having worked as a consultant to Paskievich on If Only I Were an Indian (1996), a film about an arranged encounter between three Canadian 'Indians' and a group of middle-class urbanités from Prague who try to live like them on weekends and holidays, Scheffel enlisted the filmmaker...