LIVING LIKE A COMMON MAN
Great Britain, 2011, 65 min
M.Rutten, S. Verstappen, I.Makay
28.01.2012 12:00
Youngsters in developing countries all over the world dream of going to the West. They hope to earn money and get overseas experience to improve their positions at home. But once they arrive, they end up in low-status jobs and living crammed into small houses of other newly arrived migrants.
This film follows the daily life in one such house in East London. The bunker beds are filled with young Indians, all from relatively wealthy families in Gujarat. When they return to visit India, their families have great expectations of their sons and daughters. Will these youngsters fulfill their own and their families´dream?
Sanderien Verstappen is a PhD. reasearcher in Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Her reasearch project focuses on the impact of emigration and remittances in central Gujarat (India).
Mario Rutten in Professor of Comparative Anthropology and Sociology of Asia at the University of Amsterdam. He has conducted extensive research on rural enterpreneurship and labour relations in India, Indonesia and Malaysia and on Indian migrants in Europe and their linkages with their homeregion in Gujarat, India.
Isabelle Makay is a visual anthropologist/documentary maker and teaches at the Design Academy Eindhoven. She directed several short documentaries.
Directors: M.Rutten, S. Verstappen, I.Makay
Production: Josaphatpark Productions BVBA
Language of dialogues: English, Gujarati
Language of subtitles: English, Czech
After the end of the Cold War, a lot of army bases in the East Europe became abandoned. Soldiers and their families have left, roaring of fighters has died away, univited guests stopped comming to public places. How do inhabitants of the formerly adjacent villages feel about the stay of Russian soldiers twenty years later?
What should antropological films be like? How to come to terms with alternating view of the world and with stereotypes in us? In a 3-year span, this issue kept busy an execution team around Milan Durňak who went back to his home-village to capture life of Roma people together with their Ruthenian neighbours. Every stay in the Roma colony brought one episode of a film which captures everyday life, tries to describe problems which trouble them and constantly strive to jump over their own shadows. The spectator has a chance to encounter a story in a social-cummunity centre with a hard-working mayor and festivals in the village and think about the worries and merriments of one Roma colony.
