Csaba Nemes

Title: Stand Here!
Directed by Csaba Nemes
Camera: Claudia Kovács
Producers: Tamás Lajos, Péter Fazakas
Duration: 6:00
Format: 16:9
Language: Hungarian
Subtitles: English
Production date: 2010
Production country: Hungary
Special thanks: Miklós Bosnyák

Stand Here!

Stand Here! is a puppet animation. The script provides a brief, concise and accurate summary of one of the most prevalent prejudices against Romani people: an inclination to theft. The situation game with two characters takes place in a forest, where the a white woodsman accidentally meets a young Roma man. From their dialogue unfolds the well-known psychological process of victimology, where the person accused of a crime gradually accepts and takes on the role of the offender, and succumbs to the pressure to confess to having committed a crime that he has not committed. The woodsman, who wears a ribbon with the national colours, is a complex character, he plays cat and mouse with the young man, and squeezes every drop of sadistic joy out of the situation. At the same time, he does not carry the situation to the extreme, and the situation does not lead to physical aggression. And this is exactly where Nemes’s competence and the subtlety of his method lies. This is the kind of sophisticated sadism that prevails in everyday life: let us keep the (innocent) victim in their awareness of guilt, because it this is the only way we can keep control of them. The dialogue of these two characters is based on the common knowledge they share, which is based on the prevalence of prejudices against Romani people, and predetermines the role they will play. The rules of the society are also valid in the neutral environment of the forest, and there is no individual strategy that would exempt them from these rules. Still, the only slight hope that remains for us is culture, Csaba Nemes declares by making his character, the young Rom, released by the woodsman, sing his song at the end of the movie…

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