Border-crossings: Representations of ‘Home’, the ‘West’ and the ‘Migrant’ in Romanian Film
Border-crossings: Representations of ‘Home’, the ‘West’ and the ‘Migrant’ in Romanian Film

Summary/Abstract: Cultural texts (films included) are embedded in a social matrix, have consequences in the world, playing an important role in building imaginative geographies. The kind of kaleidoscopic cartography that film contributes to leaves invisible but permanent traces which, in turn, determine the way we perceive others and are perceived as others. The paper addresses the issue of migration, as one of the most visible societal changes impinging upon the post-communist Romanian experience by examining the textual and visual strategies through which several recently produced Romanian films – Asfalt Tango (1996), Occident (2002) and Italiencele (2004) – construct the images of “home” and the “west” in order to probe the migrant’s “stay-or-leave” dilemma. Moreover, bearing witness to the increased feminisation of post-communist Romanian migratory trends, the films focus on the differential experience of migrant women and men in the context of a gendered world. Nevertheless, their representational strategies tend to comply with traditional encodings of masculinity and femininity which conform to societal expectations fostered by their respective cultural and historical location, by constructing the woman migrant within traditional encodings of femininity which equates it with the passive object, victimhood and sexuality.

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