The Future is a Safe Place Hidden in my Braids

Witchcraft and fortune-telling are forms of divination – and we Roma peop/e aspire to emancipation as a community. Roma futurism is a concept I began developing a few years ago, at a time when I felt the pressure to a/ways talk about the oppressive past, as we/I as the persecution that we face in the present. I figured out that our community does not create art about the future. ft all began during a residency in Hong Kong, where I was researching magica/ practices. When I carne back, I met witches who are active in Romania. In Romania there is a stigma around witchcraft because it’s practiced by Roma women. In Eastern Europe, Roma witches are seen as primitive remnants from the past with no connection to modern technology. Actually, the Roma women I worked with for the movie use a lot of technology. I wanted to explore this idea with them. Above all, I wanted to combine the poetry of their spe/Is, and the specific words they use, with leftist political discourse. The idea was that we cannot talk about the future before healing the wounds of the past, the transgenerational trauma inherited from the ancestors who were victims of slavery and the Holocaust. Transgenerational trauma was a very important concept for me when I first discovered it – everything became elear when I heard that science was able to prove that pain could be transmitted genetical/y. I asked the witches, “What ritual do you use against fear, trauma? What healing rituals do you use for people?” I wrote their answers down, and then rewrote them, specifical/y taking into account the Roma community and their multiple traumas. I said: “/ want to see this meeting as a real exchange. ff you show me this beautifu/ ritua/, then you can use this spe/I against discrimination and racism.”