Critical Film and Image Hub Interdisciplinary Project: Antigypsyism in Images and Films
Press release from Heidelberg University I 22 July 2025
Research on the representation of Sinti and Roma is funded as part of the federal program “Live Democracy!”
Images and films play a central role in the emergence, transmission and renewed spread of antigypsyism. A new interdisciplinary project that has started work at the Research Center on Antigypsyism of Heidelberg University is studying these processes using a variety of visual formats. They take into account the political and social significance, as well as aesthetic dimensions. The project “Critical Film & Image Hub” is being funded in the context of the cooperation consortium against antigypsyism in the federal program “Live Democracy!” with an annual grant of 400,000 euros. The funding period is up to eight years.
“Of all ethnically marked groups in Europe, Sinti and Roma are the ones who have, to this day, been cast aesthetically as scapegoats, above all through the visual language of film,” underlines project director Dr Radmila Mladenova. In view of the omnipresent visual manifestations of antigypsyism, the project intends to examine a broad range of visual formats – including feature films and documentaries, TV productions, comics and videos in social media. Moreover, these contemporary portrayals will always be analyzed in the context of historical visual traditions such as paintings and photographs. According to the Heidelberg cultural studies expert, an analysis of the established film aesthetics of the last hundred years shows that “gypsy” figures are presented in both a realistic and a metaphorical sense as “black”. “They are accordingly portrayed as personifications of darkness, frequently linked with shadows, night, colored or black costumes and dark skin color,” says Radmila Mladenova. The project aims to systematically detect such recurrent narrative patterns.
The team led by Dr Mladenova includes political scientist Jonathan Mack-Sroka, cultural studies expert Dr Andra-Octavia Drăghiciu, historian Dr Birgit Hofmann and educational scientist and film producer Lisa Smith. In addition to basic research, the academics will also focus on knowledge transfer into society. Activities in this area include a digital academy, advisory services for film workers, a materials and source database and series of academically curated films.
The work of the team in the project at the Research Center on Antigypsyism is structured along annual focal themes. The first funding year will focus on representations of Sinti and Roma in films and visual testimonies to the Holocaust. A key event will be the conference “Visibilities of Memory” taking place in November 2025. Its purpose is to enable an interdisciplinary exchange between researchers and cultural and film workers who engage with film representations of the genocide against Sinti and Roma.
The Research Center on Antigypsyism was established as the first – and so far only – academic institution in Europe with this focal theme at the Department of History of Heidelberg University. Since 2017 it has engaged in research on the causes, forms and consequences of antigypsyism in European societies from the Middle Ages to the present. With the federal program “Live Democracy!”, the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth promotes, among other things, work against radicalization and polarization in society.
