For those who didn’t see the 2011 South East European Film Festival (SEE FEST) last May, I thought I’d recap a few of my favorite films. Me, My Gypsy Family, and Woody Allen was a humorous and moving 2009 documentary about the Halilović family’s move from caravans into a permanent apartment, and the daughter Laura’s intent on being a filmmaker rather than getting married at 18, as her mother and relatives expected. Halilović’s family had lived in caravans in Italy sin...

This year, Charta Cultural Foundation and the National Center for Roma Culture, with the support of S.C. Niro Investment S.A., propose a challenging new section within B-EST International Film Festival, entitled ROMANO CINEMA AND CULTURE – featuring films about the Roma culture and cinematography, scheduled to be screened on March 27th and March 28th at Studio Cinema. The intercultural dialogue is one of the necessary conditions of a modern society and one cannot deny the fact that t...

"U-CARMEN eKHYELITSHA" is an extremely unusual version of the opera Carmen set in a squalid shanty-town "Township", Khyelitsha, near Capetown, South Africa --and sung entirely by African singers in the "click language", Khosa! This black Carmen is a light year beyond the light brown "Carmen Jones" of 1954 which starred Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge and seemed so sucy and racy at the time. For one thing, Pauline Malefane (Carmen) is not a slender Hollywood mannekin type like Dandridge ...

’Once We Were Birds: Romani Cinema’ is one of the thematic sidebars within the festival (alongside ’Homefront USA’ and ’Power : Play’). It will be devoted to films by and about the Roma and thus continues a tradition in the festival of celebrating the voices and the riches of unsung cultures. A large selection of features, shorts and documentaries will include films by Romani directors featuring Romani actors and the majority of them in the Romani language. Very rarely seen clas...