Discussion

Dir: Mila Turajlić; Croatia/France/Montenegro/Qatar/Serbia; Documentary; 2022
- Non-Aligned (100 mins)
- Cine-Guerrillas (94 mins)

Stevan Labudović spent much of his working life as a cameraman for Filmske Novosti, Yugoslavia’s newsreel production institute. As such, he had a front-row seat to a significant chunk of the 20th century’s key moments. Mila Turajlić’s diptych of documentaries looks at his life’s work, excavating the archival record to discover a humble man from Berane, Montenegro, who ended up capturing the first Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961, travelling with Tito on the yacht Galeb as his personal cameraman, and filming for the Algerian Liberation Army in the ‘50s and ‘60s, sent by Yugoslavia to counter French propaganda (though in interviews he continually downplays his achievements).

The Non-Aligned half of the diptych concerns, as the title implies, the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as a broad overview of Labudović’s life. Here Turajlić questions in part the purpose of creating her film: “Why dig out images which hardly anyone remembers?” her voiceover states, pondering the many liberatory heads of state present at the Conference who would later become tyrants, and that’s before we get to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia still to come. But the purpose soon becomes clear. Labudović’s images were recorded without sound, intended for other journalists to record their narratorly reports later, (mis)interpreting his work as they saw fit. A trip to the archives at Radio Belgrade, which separately houses the speech recordings, offers the chance to sync up the cameraman’s imagery with the spoken word: figures long gone are suddenly alive again, staking their claim for a fiercely independent, post-colonial worldview, away from the influence of the USA or the USSR.