Non-Aligned Newsreels: Fragments

In the performance, Mila Turajlić invites the audience to engage with filmed materials from the archives of the former Yugoslavia that have been excluded from dominant political narratives. The starting point is the discovery of a series of reels preserved in the newsreel archives, filmed in Africa from the 1950s onward, in a world undergoing decolonization, to document the liberation movements in countries such as Algeria, Mali, Tanzania, and Mozambique. The artist, on stage, improvises a montage of these materials with oral histories and recordings she herself gathered during a series of workshops held in the countries where the images were filmed during the presidency of Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia. In the 2024/2025 season, the French version of the performance became a production of the Théâtre National de Bretagne and will tour across France until 2027.