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When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan

If you’ve ever been exposed to any of the varieties of Roma music, from the small-combo gypsy jazz popularized by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli to the raucous, brass-driven bands popular in Eastern Europe, you know what intoxicating stuff it is. So you won’t want to miss the free screening of the music documentary When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan, which kicks off UB’s International Education Week on Monday. The film is a record of a concert tour across the US by five Romani bands. Because their culture exists in a diaspora, these musicians are in many ways more disparate than they are similar, and filmmaker Jasmine Dellal examines their interaction on the tour. She also expands our experience of them by returning with them to their various homelands in Romania, Macedonia, Spain and India. The New York Times says, “As a music document and as a labor of unabashed love, [it] could hardly be better,” while the Village Voice notes “This joyous portrait…deserves to have its brilliant colors, lavish costumes, and vivacious musical numbers seen on the big screen.” The screening will be followed by a performance by Buffalo’s own gypsy swing quartet Babik.

Monday, November 12. Film at 5:30pm, Babik at 8pm.

Student Union Theater on UB’s North Campus

(645-2228, buffalo.edu/intlservices). FREE.