Non-Aligned Newsreels: Fragments #5

performance by Mila Turajlić, 2023, 50 min.

Mila Turajlić invites the audience into a process of confronting archival material which has fallen out of political narratives. The starting point is the recovery of a trove of reels kept in the vaults of the Yugoslav Newsreels in Belgrade. The footage was filmed by Yugoslav cameramen, starting from the 1950s and travels across a decolonising world; it takes us within the ranks of the Algerian Liberation Movement and FRELIMO, to newly-independent countries such as Mali and Tanzania, and the foundational gathering of the Non-Aligned Movement, which took place in Belgrade, in 1961. Layering this “resurfaced” footage with oral histories, sound recordings and personal diaries into a confessional speculation, Turajlić’s performance voices the challenges of re-activating political voices muted from history.

Mila Turajlić, born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, is a filmmaker and visual artist whose documentary works draw on a combination of oral histories, film archives and found footage to fabricate a new reflexive language that confronts memory and ruins with the disappearing narratives of history. 

Image credit: Courtesy of Non-Aligned Newsrels/Filmske Novosti