Der offene Blick
Peter Nestler
Germany-Austria, 2022, 101 min, HD, colour, German
Der offene Blick is the second film in the diptych on the forms of resistance from the Roma and Sinti people. The film focuses on the rich work of various artists who throughout history have expressed their personal experiences in rich and open ways through writing, painting, film and music, using their work as a form of cultural celebration and remembrance but also of revolt. Rosa Gitta Martl and her daughter Nicole Sevid read short texts in memory of the people who died in the Upper Austrian "Gypsy camp" of Weyer. Apart from a series of 32 colour slides photographed in 1941, there are no other remembrances of these people. The film highlights the work of artists from the past and the present. It commemorates the work of Ceija Stojka (1933-2013), an Austrian writer, painter, singer, activist and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, whose work expresses revolt and resistance. Film-maker friend Karin Berger recalls her work, which had a great influence on other Roma and Sinti. Spanish-born painter Lita Cabellut works across media, using painting, video and dance to address social issues such as discrimination. The strength of her work is expressed in the film. She talks about her work as an art director for a film about Carmen Chaplin, about the presumably Roma background of her world-famous grandfather. Film scholar Radmila Mladenova discusses the relationship between cinema and photography and the portrayal of racist stereotypes, for example in an early film by D. W. Griffith or László Moholy-Nagy, and offers an alternative perspective seen, for example, in photographs that show other ways of portraying the Sinti and Roma in a more just and egalitarian way. The film is accompanied by the music of the orchestra Roma und Sinti Philharmoniquer, which brings together musicians from all over Europe to talk about their experiences with music. In recent years, things have changed for the better for the artists. For example, the Kai Dikhas Gallery and Foundation, under the direction of Moritz Pankok, offers artists a continuous forum to develop and exhibit their work.
