Musics, dances, guitars, parties that last five days, women with deep eyes that guess the future, languages that nobody knows, careless and nomad life, wagons and horses.Sheds, shots, knives, drug trafficking, smuggling, counterfeit Lacoste polo shirts, old cars falling down, lice, dirt, lazy, lies.I went to Baralha without predetermined ideas regarding the images I wanted to make. I was ready to film whatever was there. Diane Arbus used to say that photography was an excuse to go into people’s houses. In Baralha, you don’t need excuses to go into people’s houses. Doors and the windows are almost always open or half-open. We’re yet to come up with a camera that can steal the soul and the dignity of Roma people, and the wise indifference with which they let themselves be photographed.I don’t know if it was because it was the first time that I filmed with a digital camera or if it was because it was Baralha, but something made me feel that everything I was filming was disappearing. Everything, at which I pointed the camera, in the rhythm of Baralha’s days, where everything and nothing happen, was already disappearing.A man sits down on a chair opposite a pile of bricks that should be a house. He stays there with an empty look. I place my tripod, I connect the microphone and I film him for a few minutes until he gets up and leaves. I stop filming and without moving the tripod – because I’m unsure, I don’t know the camera well, it’s new – I check if the take is good. I press play and I see the man sitting down, in front of the missing house. As I look at the shot, I keep looking ahead, in the direction of the bricks, and nobody is there anymore.There’s a breeze that shakes all the trees around us.Scenes like this happen again a few more times. While I film my long shots the light changes completely, the wind stops and starts again.I’m not used to digital cameras. The button with a trashcan that says ‘erase’ intimidates me. I’m scared of accidentally pushing the button and of erasing everything. Many times I have the feeling that by filming Baralha I am erasing it. That everything will disappear. I have the feeling that I’m filming the past. It’s like a dream. What are we doing here, filming these houses, these people? Could my feeling be real and our images be helping these houses disappear and others be built in their place? I don’t know if everything is already part of the past. I think that that man will get a chair and sit in front of a house with an empty look in his eyes forever.