The ¿White¿ Mask and the ¿Gypsy¿ Mask in Film

The study ventures into a topic that has been so far largely neglected in film
studies: the ¿gypsy¿ phantasm on the big screen. It reconstructs the history of
¿gypsy¿ representations in film since the birth of the medium providing a systematic
film-theoretical analysis of their aesthetic and social functions. Based on a corpus
of over 150 works from European and US cinema, it is shown that ¿gypsy¿-themed
feature films share the pattern of an ¿ethno-racial¿ masquerade, irrespective of the
place and time of their origin. The author thus expands the research, concentrated
until now in the field of literature, with another art form, film, opening up new
dimensions of (popular) cultural antigypsyism.