Peter Nestler: Injustice and Resistance & An Open Mind

Two Recent Films About Sinti and Roma History and Culture

The Essay Film Festival / Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) and the Goethe-Institut present Peter Nestler’s films Injustice and Resistance & An Open Mind on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 November, when the screening will be followed by a discussion with writer Damian Le Bas and visual artist Delaine Le Bas hosted by Gareth Evans. 

Throughout his career Peter Nestler has made films about the oppression and violence against different groups of people, whether the Jews in Frankfurt, the victims of the war in Vietnam, or migrant workers in France. One group, he has repeatedly returned to are the Sinti and Roma, who have been persecuted all over Europe but became victims of a systematic genocide under the German Nazi regime. In 1970, he made the Swedish-produced Being Gypsy (Att vara zigenare / Zigeuner Sein). Taking Otto Pankok’s paintings of Roma and Sinti from the 1930s as a point of departure, he shows their continuing marginalisation and includes long uninterrupted interviews for people to tell their stories. 33 years later, in 2003, in Growing Up with Music (Mit der Musik Groß Werden), he portrayed two Roma girls who have grown up in the context of the rich tradition of Roma music and, after having received early lessons by their musician grandfather, attend music school in Budapest. 

Earlier this year, on Holocaust Memorial Day, the Goethe-Institut together with the Essay Film Festival organised by (BIMI) / showed Injustice and Resistance, followed by a discussion with Mania Petrovic, who has been actively engaged in raising awareness about Roma history, culture, and language in the UK, and the historian Rainer Schulze. Already then, we developed plans to show both films close together to underscore their close connection. We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to do so together with members of the UK Roma community, writer Damian Le Bas and visual artist Delaine Le Bas, who will join a discussion following the screening at Birkbeck on 3 November.

A collaboration between the Essay Film Festival / Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI), and the Goethe-Institut London.

The Goethe-Institut London organised a major retrospective dedicated to Peter Nestler’s films in 2012, with a reprise in 2013, both curated by Ricardo Matos Cabo. For more information please contact maren.hobein@goethe.de.