Full versions of two films produced by tve with support from the OSI Roma Decade Matching Fund are now available on this website. The documentaries followed filmmaker Arpad Bogdan as he explored his own identity and looked for answers to a series of murders of Roma in Hungary.
Full versions of "Looking for My Gypsy Roots" (2008) and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" (2009), films in tve's "Life on the Edge" series, are now available in the Video section of this website. The films, which were originally broadcast on BBC News, were directed by Antonia Meszaros and produced with support from the OSI Roma Decade Matching Fund.
Looking for My Gypsy Roots (English; 27:12)
In "Looking for My Gypsy Roots," award-winning filmmaker Arpad Bogdan set out on a personal odyssey to find some answers to the Roma dilemma. Brought up in an orphanage, he had no knowledge of the Roma culture. "When you get out from an orphanage you might know you are a gypsy, but you can’t really relate to that in a cultural sense, because you don’t speak the language, you didn’t grow up in the community and you don’t share any of its values," he said. "Other gypsies accept that, but you’ll never really belong with them… or the whites… you just get caught somewhere in between."
Darkness on the Edge of Town (English; 25:45)
Twelve months after the filming of "Looking for My Gypsy Roots," Arpad Bogdan returned to Hungary from Bulgaria, where he’d been studying English. Faced with the recent spate of attacks on Roma, he set off on a new journey, meeting with a cross-section of Roma and other Hungarians to try and find answers for the seemingly random killings of Roma in a number of small villages.
COMING SOON: OSI Roma Decade Matching Fund Call for Proposals 2010
Watch the Decade of Roma Inclusion website for the new OSI Roma Decade Matching Fund call for proposals. In 2010, the Decade Matching Fund will call for applications that are related to the objectives of the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.