Political and Personal: Pilar Távora and Cinema of Romani Reexsistentia

Abstract

While gypsy imaginaries have played a key role in the representation of a certain idea of national identity throughout the history of Spanish cinema, the social subjects, i.e., the Rroma, have traditionally been relegated to the position of object of the gaze rather than narrators of their own filmic discourses. This research considers contemporary self-representations in cinema based on an epistemology of situated feeling (Periáñez Bolaño, 2016) among the Rroma people and analyses the operations evident in films that contribute to processes of decolonisation of ethno-racial modes of representation. To this end, this article approaches the work of the Spanish filmmaker Pilar Távora from a decolonial perspective and contextualises it in what is described here as Cinema of Romani Reexsistentia. The methods used to achieve these objectives include a review of the literature and of the director’s filmography, an in-depth interview with the filmmaker herself and an analysis of her latest film, Helios Gómez, tinta y munición (2019).