Politics of Recognition: Post-1990 cinematic remembrance of the Holocaust and Porajmos in Romania and the Republic of Moldova in comparative perspective

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This research project focuses on film production after 1989/90 that deals with the persecution and extermination of Jews (Holocaust) and Roma (Porajmos) in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. In both countries, memories of the deportation and murder of Jews and Roma during Fascism and the Second World War represent disputed domains of the politics of history closely linked to contemporary politics of recognition of these minorities in both societies. These conflicts are to be analyzed through two research perspectives:First, the films themselves will be examined with view to narrative structures and iconographic patterns. An intersectional perspective will help to uncover the connections between gender, ethnicity, religion and other social categories of difference in the production of cinematic narratives of the past.Second, the production and reception of films will be considered as focal points in societal negotiations surrounding societal recognition and the social place of Jews and Roma in both societies. Ethnographic methods will help to examine the actors and actor groups in these conflicts of history politics. Particular attention will be given to the role of films in struggles for recognition.This research will strive to use various comparative and transfer analyses: cinematic productions about the Holocaust and Porajmos will be placed in relation to one another, and the development in Romania and the Republic of Moldova will be considered in its particular and mutually-constitutive elements.The aim of this research project is to provide a thick description of the refiguration of national self-images and societal self-understandings in Romania and the Republic of Moldova view to minority politics. For this purpose, the relationship between film and memory will be more precisely determined from an actor-centered, practice-focused perspective of European Ethnology.