Gelem Gelem - It's A Long Way To Walk
"We are dead even before we've been borne. We live like ghosts, chased from one town to the other, from one country to the other. Borne as Rom means you have no chance. There is no place for us to stay. Wherever you go, you are always a stranger.Nobodey wants us, we have no future."
This is what Vebija Adjovic, head of a family of more than 30 members feels about the fate of his family, of his people. He was the first to defend himself against the German authorities, not willing to accept his and his family's deportation to a country which never was his native land, but only another station of a long escape route through the European states. He was the first - and more and more families followed him to form the first civil right movement of the European Roma.
GELEM, GELEM - a song sung by the survivors of Nazi terror n their way to the death camps.
GELEM, GELEM - a song connecting the different tribes of the Roma people during their everlasting search for refuge across Europe.
GELEM, GELEM - sung by the Roma during their march through West-Germany to make people think about their fate and history, protesting against their expulsion, demanding their right to settle down.
Following the reunification of the two German states, hpostility and violence against immigrants and ethnic minorities increases. The film GELEM GELEM documents the struggle of the Roma for basic human rights.
It is the struggle for the right to live where they want to live, the struggle for the application of the European Parliament recommendations concerning the peotection of Romani culture and language in Europe. Two years later, at the end of these actions, after a long series of worthless declarations and broken promises, the Roma now stand where they started off. But they have made an important experience: they have learnt to fight for their interests unwilling to beg for alms or to flee any longer.