Cinematic Cartographies

Abstract Patric Chiha’s film Brothers of the Night (2017) depicts a community of Bulgarian Roma sex workers in Vienna, all of them male and self-identifying as heterosexual although working in a gay establishment. Using queer theory and human geography, with particular emphasis on space and time, I analyse how the film shifts and contests the popular stereotyped cinematic representation of Romani people as well as homonormative and Western-centric notions of queerness. In its original aesthetic, narrative structure and hybrid genre it departs from a binary understanding of sexuality and identity, offering instead new ways of portraying queer and marginalised identities on screen.

and a means of producing 'queer identification, desire, and figurability as the constituent feature of the medium '. 11 Thus, cinema becomes a space of not only identity representation but also, importantly, identity production.I propose a mapping of Brothers that goes against the stream of time and chrono-logic, instead using sites and loci as the key concepts organising the analysis.This methodological approach owes much to Carla Freccero's idea of reading literary texts against the stream of established conventions, either temporal or spatial.In her words, my analysis 'proceed [s] otherwise than according to a presumed logic of the "done-ness" of the past, since queer time is haunted by the persistence of affect and ethical imperatives in and across time '. 12 The first part of this article deals with a depiction of normative spaces dominated by nuclear family ideals and traditional values.On closer reading, I reveal that this rendition is often permeated and punctured by homoerotic fissures.The next part focuses on homonormative spaces and how these sites of essentialised Western gay identity are constantly transgressed and contested by protagonists.Lastly, I look at specific queer Roma spaces and consider whether their use in Brothers signifies a new way of representing non-Western queer identities.

Queer Theory and Roma Representation
As Karma Lochrie notes, 'Queering is a project of contestation… It works through the hyperbolic appropriation and reversal of the delegitimisation signified by the term "queer".' 13 Following Lochrie, I argue that Brothers is an excellent example of a cinema that queers audiences' exceptions of what it means to be gay, Roma, Eastern European or a sex worker.It legitimises the possibility of the existence of queer Roma in the midst of normative societal protocols.To queer a cinematic 'Gypsy' trope is to disrupt our current preconceptions about Roma and to envision alternatives to the hegemonic homonormative ideals of the West.
My understanding of (homo)normative space and time is informed largely by Jack Halberstam's writings, especially In a Queer Time and Place, and Freccero's Queer/Early/Modern, both of which proved to be valuable sources of analytical and critical tools.Halberstam provides what amounts to an interesting updated view on queer space and time, pointing out the failure of scholars, such as David Harvey, to refer to the normativity of our perceived times and spacesfamily time, work time, reproductive time, etc.He also shows our hegemonic tendencies to not only gender but also sexualise space and time. 14He then goes on to link these essentialising processes with global flows of capitalism, which together present themselves as uniquely linked to time and space without any other alternatives. 15Importantly for the analysed film, Halberstam argues for the preference of white cis gay males when it comes to representing queer identities, emphasising that 'the relations between sexuality and time and space provide immense insight into the flows of power and subversion within postmodernism'. 16In his view the postmodern, or late capitalist, incarnation of urban gay style and culture forms part of 'the new homonormativity' to which not every queer person can and will aspire. 17It is in accord with Halberstam's conceptualisation of homonormativity and its universalising tendencies that I position the protagonists of Brothers in search of more inclusive and encompassing representations of queer identities on screen.Another useful idea taken from Halberstam is the notion of queer time, defined by the author as being in opposition to a normative time line which 'charts an obvious transition out of childish dependency through marriage and into adult responsibility through reproduction'. 18Queer time, and space, do not follow this simplified logic and are therefore often described by those in the mainstream as perverse or outright dangerous to the established social order.Exploring the entangled times and spaces of the film allows us to reposition these Western normative assumptions about one's progress in life, and simultaneously open up new possibilities and modes of being.

Eastern Encounters in the West: Notes on the Metaspaces of the Film
As stated, space and place play a dual role in this article, and looking at them simultaneously allows us to map the diegetic spaces of the film but also to contest and shift the old cartographies of film studies.The meta/ spatial aspect of Brothers (or the non-diegetic spatiality of the film) lies in the transnational character of its protagonists as migrants from Eastern Europe to Vienna, a Western European city.While much attention has been devoted, both by academics and popular commentators alike, to the above-discussed ubiquitous representations of homonormativity, often referred to as the global gay, the visual and literary texts presenting Eastern European sexual identities are still rarely considered.This gap in the research has been addressed by scholars such as Martin Manalansan IV, Jon Binnie or Robert Kulpa and Joanna Mizielinśka, who have argued for more localised voices and stories from the peripheries of the 'developed' world. 19It has also been stressed that this in-depth analysis of marginal queer geographies needs to go beyond the discourse of 'West and the rest' and geopolitical postcolonial areas of enquiry that do not account for more nuanced, localised contexts. 20The word 'queer' itself is an English word rooted in the geopolitical and historical context of Western Europe and America or, broadly speaking, the Global North.Accordingly, queer theory has mostly been developed by English-speaking scholars from the West (or anglophone academia) and its development follows events that took place in the United States, and to some extent Britain and Western Europe, with a blunt omission of other regions and localities and their specificities.Consequently, when talking about queer, gay or lesbian representation on screen, the most readily available options are anglophone, or Western, concepts based on geocultural and geotemporal specificities of the Western world, dictated by Western history and epistemology.What Western thought idealises as progress and modernity cannot and should not be necessarily applied to Roma communities in Europe or countries outside the Global North.In so doing, any scholar faces a potentially deadly trap of relegating to the abyss of 'primitivity' and 'backwardness' cultures and peoples who do not fit into universalised hegemonic Western patterns.Freccero acknowledges this tendency and its ensuing problems, noting that 'it also homogenises modern sexual subjectivity by universalising a US (or Euro-American) model of gay identity across national, cultural, and spatial boundaries'. 21hile postcolonial theory often offers a neat way out of this conundrum, it is limited in its geotemporal scope and leaves out areas such as the former Second World or metropolitan, seemingly Western, spaces inhabited by Romani people, as is the case in Brothers.In their edited book on Eastern European sexualities, Kulpa and Mizielinśka speak of a 'Western vs post-colonial dichotomy' that has monopolised queer and sexual studies in relation to space, place and the global. 22I borrow their assertion that, in fact, a 'cross-contamination of theories is a queer studies practice', 23 and make use of the various strands of thought and theory available, drawing on, among others, the decolonial option, queer studies, feminist theory and human geography to flesh out the disruptive anti-systemic core of the film.Thus, I do not assess the perceived progress of the protagonists; I avoid comparing them to other cultures (especially the Western one) or streams and fashions in cinema and its theory.As I consider Brothers to be a completely new piece of visual text entering previously unchartered waters of queer Roma representation, I refrain from placing it within the continuum of Western queer cinema, which has been built on foundation blocks specific to the Global North. 24That is not to say that the discussed movie exists completely separate from any cultural influences and remains untouched by previous works of queer filmmaking.I merely point to the inadequacy of certain theories to account for the myriad of non-Western identities and modes of representation and being, which often find themselves in the middle of the West.Being queer and representing the othered queer figure on screen can vary radically, depending on geotemporal aspects of production, cultural context and local politics.I reject hegemonic visions of LGBTQ + life as shown in Western media and film, and instead read and map Brothers with an open mind and attention to its production context.Paraphrasing Kulpa and Mizielinśka, queering cinema (and queer cinema) can mean different things in different settings, even if they do not immediately read as queer against Western ideals. 25urthermore, the topic of queer lives is less common in Central and East European (CEE) productions, and conversely, East European characters in Western productions are rarely given a central spot. 26A scholar who has attempted to theorise this is Robin Griffiths, 27 who has developed a spatial approach to the topic of queerness in CEE based on the notion of fast-developing big cities, like Prague, which attracted young people eager to achieve the capitalist dream they were promised by the political transitions of 1989.That this dream often ended on the streets and propelled the West's idea of freely available Eastern bodies is a less spoken-about issue, and the scholar points to the space-encoding aspects of representing Eastern European spaces on screen.
Griffiths's study provides not just a useful spatial approach to the subject but also draws attention to the changes that have occurred in the region in the last three decades.big city.In the context of Brothers, it becomes paramount to underline the continuity of these sociohistorical processes, particularly when looking at the migration of CEE Roma to Western Europe.These movements and (re)settlements can be seen as part of a bigger restructuring of the post-Communist social tissue, where previously regimes, although flawed, had provided some economic support to Roma communities and some kind of social welfare package.The situation might have been far from ideal, but the introduction of a free market and neoliberal policies after 1989 did little to improve the socioeconomic standing of Romani people across the region.Thus, the ensuing wave of migration in search of better opportunities. 28Another of Griffiths's observations, namely the orientalising assumptions of Westerners about East European bodies and sexualities, their perceived submissiveness, cheapness, and availability upon payment, is strongly resonant with the film's main theme. 29onsequently, I am guided in my task to map the spaces in the film, as well as to position it against the existing cartographies of global and European cinema, by the following questions.What alternatives to Western visions of homonormativity are offered by images of queer Roma bodies, spaces and sites?What is the relation between these bodies and the social production of space in the film?Since notions of spatiality and locality in the film are crucial to understanding how global queer can translate into local queer, what are the localised meanings of being queer and Roma?

Normative, Hegemonic Spacetimes
The ways in which the film stages and presents gendered bodies in space and time undermine and challenge existing normative assumptions about migrants, sex workers, Roma and other marginalised groups.Brothers' protagonists are what Halberstam calls queer subjectspeople who 'opt to live outside of reproductive and familial time as well as on the edges of logics of labor and production', 30 whether by choice or out of necessity.But they are, nonetheless, immersed in what Gillian Rose calls transparent space, a space of public, heteronormative Western hegemony where queer subjects are immediately marked as perverse, deviant and different. 31I will now look at these normative spaces and timelines in Brothers in order to sketch a background for later rumination on the queer space and time in the film.It is necessary to draw attention to the assumed normalcy and ubiquity of transparent spaces to be able to deconstruct their hegemony and propose alternative formations.
In an act of defiance, Brothers almost immediately undermines and deconstructs notions of ever-present normative space-time in cinema.The audience quickly learns that the prostitutes are effectively husbands and fathersalmost all have left behind a heterosexual family unit in Bulgaria, despite their young age.But the camera never ventures out of the boundaries of Vienna, and the presence of the hetero families is rendered through an array of formal and stylistic choices rather than actual camera images.Chiha never directly shows us any family members on screen, any images or knowledge of them is mediated through stories and pictures displayed by protagonists on their mobile phones.On several occasions in the film the young Roma present their distant families left in Bulgaria in scenes reminiscent of documentary interviews.The queer subjects are filmed answering questions, presumably posed off screen by the director or producers, often accompanied by their mobile phones to illustrate the stories of home and families in Bulgaria.They scroll through their photos to share memories of wives and children but also parties with friends and encounters with clients.In other words, the heteronormative spaces and timelines are not entirely left out of the film but rather mediated and rendered differently, underscoring their secondary position in relation to the queer kinship and their geographical distance in real life.Furthermore, leaving the amount of space the hetero families occupy on screen in the hands of protagonists, at least to some extent, places the power to decide firmly and literally in their hands.The queer subjects are the ones deciding how much of their normative lives they want to reveal, and this emancipates them from the old hierarchies of power whereby a director, usually a white cis male, decides what and when something is shown.
That is not to say that heterosexual aspects are completely abandoned or ignored by the filmmakers or characters.Ironically, the main reason the protagonists find themselves in a foreign country is the need to earn money to support their wives and children back home.Notwithstanding, they do not seem resentful, and talk of missing their wives, children, parents and extended families.This fusing and mixing of various identities, loyalties and connections is characteristic of transnational flows in the era of global capitalism, facilitated by fast-developing advances in information technology.With the help of the internet and digital technologies, Harveyean time-space compression takes place on the very screen in front of us.Subjects coexist and travel between heterosexual, normative spaces and queer spaces, allowing for a hybrid sexual subjectivity in which queer and non-queer timelines join and disconnect again and again.This is further projected in the film through small details, seemingly unimportant, which iterate the hybridity of the pictured spaces; for example, when one of the men breaks his hand, the names scribbled on the cast are those of his wife and children but also his queer companions.
The usual public spaces, such as markets, main streets, shops or the city centre, which one might expect to see in a film shot in Vienna, are not featured directly, or, at best, are only shown in passing, on very few occasions.The hegemonic spaces populated by Western normative characters are virtually rendered invisible in Brothers, in a reversal of the usual cinematic perspective where it is queer spaces that are shown as marginal, hidden and peripheral to the mainstream spaces of central action and plot.In doing this Chiha uproots our expectations of queer and normative spaces by positioning the marginal as the centrethe Eastern European queer bodies take up all the diegetic space.While back in Bulgaria they are expected to perform their traditionally masculine roles of father and husband, in Vienna they are unhindered by such notions.As if to puncture the continuous queer spatiality of Brothers, roughly in the middle of the film Chiha inserts a scene that gives us a glimpse of what the protagonists do and how they behave while in normative spaces.Instead of one of the usual settings, the camera follows the men to their rented apartment, which they seemingly share with other, older Bulgarian Roma workers.The entire group is seen relaxing over beers and cigarettes, playing music and chatting about returning home for a couple of weeks.When one of the boys puts on a sentimental Romani tune, the older men start to sing, giving what amounts to an improvised performance.In this scene none of the previous homoeroticism is present and the young men are careful to adjust their behaviour to mainstream expectations.This penetration of the cinematic queer space with perceived normality highlights the constructedness of the subjects' sexualities and the performative aspects of one's identity.The protagonists negotiate and adapt their various identities in order to navigate spaces and places that might not always be hospitable to queer Roma.
Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan argue that the binary opposition of modernity-tradition often dominates academic and other discussions about migrant and non-Western queer identities, relegating anything deemed not modern enough to 'backward', traditional, or even 'barbaric'. 32Thus, such discussions tend to promote a Euro-American notion of modernity without attention to other timelines of development.At the same time, many queer others are expected to conform to Western, or globalised, models of sexual identity, which tend to be based on, once again, Euro-American, white, middle-class experiences.These narratives, revolving around one's escape from the clutches of the patriarchal family/nation-state and entering into the liberated world of the gay international, while sometimes true for queer people, are not necessarily always the case.Halberstam outlines the normative temporality guiding mainstream society's exceptions of how people should proceed and behave in life.He uses the term 'queer time' to dispute the sequence of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, in which each follows the other with no possibility of reverting, and proposes a radical turn away from the chronological patterns of growing up and maturing, towards a timeline in which, for example, being a man does not follow being an adolescent boy.In his words, 'this life narrative charts an obvious transition out of childish dependency through marriage and into adult responsibility through reproduction '. 33 This disruptive attitude to the normativity of time as it is perceived in Western societies is to some extent present in Chiha's film.Since most of the characters in Brothers seem to be married and have children, their turn to the almost carefree, semi-utopian community living free of the restrictions of society back home, marks a different, warped temporality, one more in accord with queer time.They have entered adulthood relatively early, as Nikolay, one of the characters, notes.'It's a gypsy thing, getting married so young,' he says, but now they have come back to a kind of freedom usually associated with adolescence.The cycle that normalises certain social behaviours, gender codes and sexual preferences, while obscuring the possibility of the existence of other forms of temporal and spatial being, is abandoned in Brothers in favour of new modes of being.The queer community of young Roma men who hustle in Vienna is shocking to the normative, hegemonic society around them, not so much because of their profession but because they dare to step out of the prescribed normative temporality, ultimately leaving their families behind in a different time and space.The spatial transgression of moving from Bulgaria to Austria marks the beginning of new possibilities unmarked by heterosexual binary rhetoric, and a new temporality in which the two worlds exist in parallel.The film does not follow a classic narrative arc of overcoming obstacles and culminating in a romantic ending where two people reunite in a romantic union (whether heterosexual or homosexual).Instead, it leaves the audience uncertain of its subjects' futures, their lives suspended and their next steps in life unsure as if frozen in time.While one of the protagonists, Stefan, speaks of moving somewhere else, he also yearns to go back to Bulgaria one day, like most of his friends, but only once they are 'rich and successful'.The ending is therefore open-ended, the audience left to their own interpretations, and suggests many possible paths in life while emphasising the precarious position of Roma hustlers.
I will now map the homonormative spaces and their presumed hegemony in the West.

The Western Metropolis and Gay Identities
Metronormativity has been dominant in European and global cinema for some time. 34But while Brothers is set in a European capital, there are no scenes or shots of Viennese landmarks, the camera steadily focused on niche, marginal and interstitial places instead.Shot mostly at night and inside rather than on the streets, the film builds an image of a community that, despite being in a metropolitan setting, feels detached from the metronormativity described by Halberstam and Scott Herring. 35What is more, Brothers ends with the protagonists signalling their will to leave the city, marking their attitudes as decidedly non-urban yet still queer, separating the notion of gay identity from the urban setting.Furthermore, it undermines the stereotype of a 'gay imaginary' in which the city represents a beacon of tolerance, prosperity and glamour for any member of the queer community. 36atric Chiha makes very conscious use of established gay iconography and imaginary.He creates phantasmatic, staged scenes that serve as a space for intimate interviews and dialogues between characters.In one of the first scenes a young man, perhaps still a teenager, dressed in a leather jacket and visibly drunk calls for a certain 'Captain'.The setting is reminiscent of a river port or dock with graffiti on one of the background walls that reads ANTI CAPITAL.The water and the lights of cars are visible in the distance.There are two other men, one dressed in a classic sailor outfit complete with a wide-brimmed white hat.Together they decide to get a drink and 'look for girls', a statement that stands in clear juxtaposition to the obviously homoerotic allusions of the sailor-inspired scenery and outfits.The marine theme is reinforced in the shots that follow, in which the three young men are inside (a dock?) and wearing striped T-shirts.As noted by Richard Dyer in Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film, the sailor trope has a strong and deeply rooted connotation with camp aesthetics, gay imagery and pornography, 37 and Brothers makes use of it, also on the formal level.The use of soft focus combined with strongly saturated hues of blues, violets and warm yellows could be read as a direct reference to a classic gay cinematic oeuvre, namely Querelle. 38Fassbinder shot his movie entirely inside a studio, and it is now famed for its depiction of homosexual desire and sex with the eponymous character being a young, handsome sailor.Not unlike Querelle, which deliberately uses light and camera lens effects to reinforce its artificiality, Brothers makes use of colour, light, and music to create a dreamlike setting.Throughout the movie coloured light and sailor imagery combine to form a space of queer desires and homoerotic dreams where protagonists allow themselves to be honest and open about what gives them pleasure and what excites them.It is usually in this specific setting that the young men are seen discussing intimate details of their work, their first experiences of being with a man (usually much older patrons of the Café Rüdiger) and make bold statements that otherwise would not be uttered ('I want my cock in your arse).The formal and aesthetic elementspurple lights, young bodies, drag, sailor outfitscreate a non-realistic, purposefully artificial mise en scène, which brings to mind images such as those drawn by Touko Valio Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland, now considered a model of gay pornographic imagery. 39ut what really marks the Western hegemonic ideal of gay identity is the Café Rüdiger.This bar for seemingly older members of the gay community doubles as a peep show and entertainment space that also provides discreet sexual services.It does exist and the scenes inside it were shot with more realistic lighting, and with the Roma protagonists dressed in everyday clothing instead of eroticised sailor outfits.The space of the bar is marked as exclusively male, with young men performing activities traditionally regarded as masculine, such as snooker/pool, smoking and drinking alcohol.But the two areas, that of a homoerotic dream and reality, merge and blend together herethere is a young man dressed in an effeminate way, dancing inside a glass cage pretending to be taking a shower while slowly strippinghighlighting the porous, fluid boundaries between various spaces, whether gay, queer, straight or other.Nonetheless, the conversations between Roma hustlers and patrons, and the attitude of an older man towards the young sex workers (casual, capitalist, only interested in obtaining sexual gratification), work together to underscore the precarious and uncertain position of the protagonists.Their place within the gay community of Vienna is not equal to that of their patrons, as long as they depend on their patrons' money and interest in order to support themselves and their families.The dream of metropolitan, glamorous, urban gay life is questioned and contested when confronted with the harsh reality of East European sex workers' experiences.Images and stories of surviving rather than thriving fill the movie, positioning the Western homonormative lifestyle as an exclusive privilege, not a global norm that many would have us believe it is.

Queer Roma Spaces
In my effort to circumscribe what I mean by queer Roma spaces, I engage notions of camp and kitsch and draw on art history and anthropology, as well as film studies, to further explore the intertwining of style, space and identity, and position it within the imagined order of cinema.I argue that Patric Chiha makes extensive use of camp and kitsch in creating images of young Roma bodies in homoerotic contexts, favouring a more visual approach to representing this specific Roma queerness.'Camp' I understand as being an aesthetic practice of resistance, an example of fluidity in representation developed by those who have been marginalised and whose subjectivities are hybrid. 40In line with Susan Sontag's now classic essay on camp sensibilities, I perceive it as a mode of visual and textual storytelling, a way of framing certain aesthetic streams, often categorised as 'kitsch' or 'popular,' and using them in a conscious, deliberate mode. 41In The Culture of Queers, Dyer provides a more recent understanding of the word: 'So camp is a way of being human, witty and vital, without conforming to the drabness and rigidity of the hetero male role.' 42 He highlights the communal sense of coming and being together enveloped in the term, its strategies of self-mockery and irony used by gay/queer men to distance themselves from straight men.But he also points to its ambiguity, which can often work against the grain of mainstream norms but can have a more negative side too (for example, when appropriating femininity while reinforcing misogyny). 43I apply some of Dyer's ideas to further zoom in on Roma queer aesthetics in Brothers, especially those developed in Now You See It.
Conversely, 'kitsch' has not been well conceptualised by film scholars, and it has been given relatively little attention by academia in general.As noted by Tomáš Kulka, a prominent researcher of aesthetics, 'despite the fact the phenomenon of kitsch is central to our culture, very few theoretical studies have been devoted to the subject'. 44There is a paucity of research investigating the relationship between identity, ethnicity and the aesthetic of kitsch, but one recent anthropological investigation into public attitudes towards the Romani people was conducted in Bulgaria.Andreea Racleș and Ana Ivasiuc observe in their case study that the general population claimed Roma had an 'innate proclivity toward colourful decoration and a bad taste [sic]', therefore they (Roma) 'exaggeratedly decorated their inhabited spaces and bodies'. 45What is worth noting here is the persistence of the 'Gypsy' stereotype and associated negative narratives.The association of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers with bad taste, or kitsch, often runs parallel to the notion that these groups are somehow dirty and smelly, lacking in personal hygiene, and are trying to cover it up by excessive use of body sprays and perfumes.The concealment of dirt and poor taste are in turn allegedly reflective of Gypsies' secretive nature, their innate vile characteristics and deceitful ways when dealing with non-Roma.The researchers note the importance of constituting Roma's otherness through sensorial and aesthetic signs, effectively creating what they call a sensorial-material nexus in which bodies, materialities and temporalities intersect in European space, othering the Gypsy.This stylistic exaggeration and purposeful bad taste invite parallels with camp, in Brothers consciously utilised as a way of resistance to the dominant modes of representation of both queer people and Roma people.Apart from the phantasmic scenes in which they are clothed in leather jackets, white vests and jeans, the protagonists are usually shot in casual personalised outfits.Belts with big ornate buckles, T-shirts encrusted with sequins, hair carefully styled with gel, plucked eyebrows, even an occasional diamond piercingall work together to convey a popular image of Romani people and their assumed disposition for bad taste.
And yet Chiha's skillful observation of the characters does not convey judgement on their sartorial choices or otherwise.Quite the opposite, their unique style becomes the visual marker and signifier of their identity, in a move that could be described as queer by Karma Lochriewhat was considered 'bad taste' becomes legitimised through the filmic medium, repositioned and appropriated to contest the mainstream's notions of fashion and good taste.Similarly, the setting and sound are used to underscore the 'Gypsiness' of the characters.Most of the score is what could best be described as a fusion of popular disco and elements drawn from Balkan and Roma folk traditions.The effect is an eclectic musical mix that has strong oriental (or Eastern) tones and seems to permeate both diegetic and non-diegetic spaces (especially in scenes where the men dance to the music).Chiha also consciously plays with our assumptions about Roma people and kitsch.He films his protagonists lounging and smoking shish on a tiger print throw, proudly displaying cheap tattoos or carrying the notorious plastic plaid bagan ultimate symbol of every open market east of Berlin, now sold by big brands as the trendy must-have accessory. 46The screen becomes a meeting point for low and high culture, Roma and gay aesthetics, what is fashionable and what is considered kitsch.This hybrid approach to style unfolds to reveal something newa queer Roma style.
Nevertheless, none of the characters openly admit to being gay, with the notable exception of Nikolay, who performs as a woman and hints at his queer identity.He is the only protagonist to openly confess his queer desires, his fascination with the masculine physique and his attrac- tion to men outside the confines of work.At some point one of the boys calls Nikolay 'a gayboy', to which he replies, 'Everyone here is gay.Normal men don't fuck men.'This honest admission and at the same time strongly heteronormative discourse of 'normality' is one of few instances in the film where gay/queer sexuality is directly spelled out.The Roma men seem to be keen to underscore their heterosexual identities by constantly stating on camera that 'Other guys do everything.I don't do everything.I'm not gay.'This somewhat perverse and superficial negation of queer desire ironically works to highlight the characters' homoerotic kinship.The titular 'brothers' strikes a strong chord of male friendship but also family ties, and, thus, indirectly suggests an almost incestuous relationship between the men.Freccero provides an interesting literature-based reading of incest as a manifestation of queerness within patriarchal heteronormativity.47Thus, the implied brotherhood and erotic kinship in Brothers could be read, in line with Freccero's argument, as a way of representing the queer within a normative heterosexual community.
Yet even Nikolay confesses that he would like to get married and have a family one day.All the men constantly navigate between the expectations of their families, their clients and their own desires and longings.It is obvious that despite their seemingly carefree attitudes and boyish bragging, they still are foreign sex workers in a very precarious position.They recall poverty and lack of job prospects in Bulgaria (perhaps par-tially due to their Roma ethnicity and the stigma surrounding them), saying that they all came to Vienna in order to work 'normal' jobs but either failed to remain in them due to language barriers or simply could not find any.There is one man who admits to having heard of gay people in Vienna paying extremely well for sex and thus making a risky decision to try his luck in the Austrian capital.He also explains that his idea of being gay was rather vague, as he thought 'gay guys were transvestites.With long hair and tits.'This somewhat naive misconception, perhaps still not uncommon, underscores another dimension of the transnational and transcultural identities that are being forged in the film.The young men are moving away from their insular communities and into the big city, a European capital, acquiring knowledge and experiences previously unattainable to them because of their ethnic and national background.They also learn to monetise their good looks and youthful appearance as a means of supporting their families in Bulgaria.Therefore, while prostitution might not have been their first choice of earning an income, it has proved to be rather profitable and relatively easy.The transnational East-West sex worker migration plot strikes a strong chord of reality; prostitution among female and male Eastern Europeans is often a means of last resort and enforced by poverty and lack of education.Since these factors are considerably more widespread among the Eastern European Roma, it is perhaps not surprising that the protagonists of Brothers have found themselves in such situations.These flows of transnational sex workers have been additionally facilitated by the Fall of Communism and subsequent enlargement of the European Union, with the ensuing freedom of movement within the Schengen Zone.This specific geopolitical situation allows for new forms of transnational migration patterns.
Another formal way of achieving a sense of intimacy and queerness used by Chiha, besides the aesthetic, is careful observation of the protagonists' corporeality.The camera often lingers on certain aspects of their bodies, revealing their intimate relations with each other and feelings (perhaps love?) their share.In many shots Chiha catches the boys cuddling, sleeping together, holding hands or having intimate conversations.Put another way, Brothers creates queer Roma spaces through camera work, which often lingers in extreme close-ups of subjects' faces and body parts.In one scene, a young Roma shows off his tattoo (which is incidentally his wife's name) and an extreme close-up of his chest reveals smooth skin and a sculpted breast clad in a white sleeveless shirt.His friend touches the tattoo, to which the man responds, 'Don't touch me like that, you'll get me all horny.'The homoeroticism of the scene is further underscored by the topic of the conversation (or rather, monologue) of the tattooed man, who narrates his entry into the world of male prostitution in a very detailed and graphic way.No topic is taboo, and the young men talk freely about sex, desire, money, their work as prostitutes and their families.In another scene, the camera is placed in the middle of the chatting boys, who are in the Rüdiger Café, heightening the feeling of being present 'there and now' alongside them.Contrary to more conventional depictions of conversations on screen, where often medium shots and shot/reverse shot are used, Chiha here makes use of close-ups, bringing the faces almost too close to the viewer.Sometimes, voyeuristic blocking is used to enhance a sense of overlooking an intimate, erotic meeting between the characters.By obscuring some shots, the director is playing with the audience by, on one hand, situating the viewer as a voyeur and, on the other hand, reminding us that even the dream spaces have a grain of reality in them.Chiha often uses blocking and frame compositions that position the viewer as if in the filmic space.The viewer is under the illusion of standing right next to the protagonists, as if becoming one of the young men standing in the circle.On the other hand, the feeling of inhabiting several spaces, or film planes, at the same time is reiterated through a montage of shots from two different points of view.One is that of an insider, participating in the intimate conversations; the other, that of a voyeur, watching the scene from a hidden spot, eavesdropping on the conversation.
The presumed heteronormativity of the Gypsy subject, so persistent in previous visual and literary texts, is laid bare in Brothers, which plays with established conventions and popular imagery to present a queer, perverse story instead.The subject is multiple, the men's heteronormativity is constantly questioned, and their motives are contested when the staged set-ups appear on the screen.Their hypermasculinity is probed from within and gender assumptions are revisited when a non-binary character, Nikolay, is introduced.With the help of the camera and the medium of film, Chiha asks his subjects to play with their assumptions about themselves as well as our assumptions and ideas about identity cat- The tattoo is revealed in a sensual, homoerotic way, source: Brothers of the Night, Patric Chiha, 2017 egories such as gender and sexuality.As Freccero notes, the universal model of modern homosexuality might at times be problematic, 48 and Brothers of the Night explores this theme of (homo)normativity, ethnicity and sexuality from a unique perspective, both textually and stylistically.

Conclusion
I set out to chart various diegetic and non-diegetic spaces, and times, in Brothers of the Night, to commence the task of creating an allegorical map of queer Roma cinema and to posit it within larger, global cinematic cartographies.The topic of Roma, Travellers and Gypsies in cinema is not new, yet very few films portray the life and experiences of this group in a way that goes beyond the common stereotypes.The potential of film as a site of encounters, and its ability to capture, produce and display the matrix of time, space and identity, are crucial in Brothers of the Night.The hybridisation of the genres, styles and spaces allows not only for interrogation and the showing of unarticulated or under-represented loci but also for their incorporation into the common imaginary.The medium of film allows us to operate on abstract levels of understanding, to illustrate ambiguous concepts that escape binary definitions.What is more, Chiha, although not Roma, manages to situate his camera alongside his subjects, entering their inner circle rather than merely observing them, thus allowing his protagonists to escape the objectifying and patronising attitude of many other filmmakers.In other words, Brothers becomes a site of simultaneity where various modes of being and living coexist (an endeavour which is, in itself, very much queer).It is the medium of film, literally understood here as a material object, which allows these seemingly separate places and timelines to exist together.Then, understood more metaphorically, the film becomes a third space where various modes of living and being can coexist alongside each other.Cinema, the screen space, becomes the connection and the transgression, the liminal space where against all odds different worlds can meet.Indeed, the mixing and hybridisation of various spaces is subtly underscored by the subjects' blended speech.They smoothly change from broken German to Bulgarian and back to their native Roma dialect with occasional interjections in English, sometimes all at once within a single sentence.As mentioned in an interview with Patric Chiha, it was extremely difficult to communicate with the actors due to their hybrid use of languages (and poor grasp of German), and the director ended up resorting to the help of a translator who was fluent in Bulgarian Romani as well as German. 49he use of the kitsch specific to Gypsies as a cinematic device is a newer development.The introduction of such a particular aesthetic, in the context of Roma depiction, challenges viewers to abandon their ideas about what cinema and cinematic representation of Gypsies should be.Mixing of lowbrow and highbrow culture exposes various audiences to a new and unexpected hybridised form of style and understanding of beauty, inviting non-Roma people to embrace what they would have ordinarily assumed to be marginal, foreign and unfitting.By incorporating kitsch as a legitimate means of cinematic portrayal and elevating its status, by association, the filmmaker is making a case for Roma imagery to enter the European pantheon of recognised stylistic features.Perhaps the kitsch imagery so commonly associated with the Romani people could be one of the modes of representing Gypsy heritage and culture on screen.After all, what we deem 'bad taste' is relative and constructed entirely by our culture, not unlike gender, and its negative connotations could be renegotiated within a global circuit of coexisting multiple styles and aesthetics.
In a Queer Time and Place, op cit, p 10 Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Polity Press, Cambridge, The capitalist dream of the early 1990s has changed and shiftednow young Eastern Europeans migrate to the West in search of opportunities instead of to the nearest