We were awakened this morning by a phone call from Budapest that brought us an amazing piece of information.
Romania's poorest Gypsies are living in the TV series "Dallas."
Our Hungarian friend explained that there are something like 14 different castes of Gypsies (an elaboration of the system in India, where they originally came from), and the very lowest are those who live by scavenging salvageables from trash dumps. Their material existence is so wretched that the Romanian government tried to obstruct the making of a film about them, because it reflected so poorly on Romania.
It is these Gypsies who have defiantly glamorized their lives by identifying with the rich and powerful Ewings.
They're so crazy about the show that when they set up a traveling village near a festering dump, they place a board at the entrance and write "Dallas" on it. The men dress and act like J.R. They swagger around in Stetsons. It has provided the theme and style of their culture.
This, at any rate, is how it was described to us by the friend who called from Budapest. She had worked on a film called "Dallas Pashamende" ("'Dallas' Among Us," in the Roma language), which has been a hit at a couple of European film festivals. It's now in the application process for festivals here. If you Google it, the only hits you get are in Portuguese and Hungarian. (If you Google the English title, though, you get this and this, which makes it sound as if the "Dallas" reference is more grim irony than naïve fandom. My guess is it's both, and another case of "the inexhaustible inventiveness of culture.") When it was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, in the question-and-answer session afterwards, Romanian-born Hungarian director Robert-Adrian Pejo was aggressively questioned by audience members who didn't believe what they were seeing and thought he'd made the whole thing up. But he didn't. He lived with Gypsies while making the film, was even the guest of a Bulibasha, a "King of the Gypsies."
Who no doubt styled himself as Jock Ewing.
We're probably going to meet Pejo. He's doing background research for his next film, to be set in Russia and Chechnya, and the mutual friend who called from Budapest thought he might be interested in talking to Jacques about life and death in a labor camp near a remote Soviet mining village 60 years ago. Then we'll get the lowdown on Dallas on the Danube. I will report.
- amba
Comments