Over two days, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination together with the Maison Française proudly presents a preview screening of filmmaker Mila Turajlić’s new documentary diptych of two feature-length films that take us on an archival road trip through the birth of the Third World Project, based on unseen 35mm materials filmed by Stevan Labudović, the cameraman of Yugoslav President Tito.

On March 7 at 6:00 pm, there will be a preview screening of the second half of the diptych: Ciné-Guerrillas. The film plunges us into the media battle that played out during the Algerian war for independence, where cinema was mobilized as a weapon of political struggle against colonialism.

A conversation between Mila Turajlić, Elaine Mokhtefi, and Madeleine Dobie will follow the screening.

Speakers

Mila Turajlić is a documentary filmmaker and archive scholar. Born in Belgrade she directed and produced the award-winning films The Other Side of Everything and Cinema Komunisto. In 2020-21 she was a Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

Elaine Mokhtefi was born in New York and moved to Paris in her twenties. She participated in the struggle for Algerian independence. She lived in Algiers from 1962 to 1974, a period described in her 2018 memoir, Algiers: Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers.

Madeleine Dobie is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her publications include Foreign Bodies. Gender, Language & Culture in French Orientalism, Trading Places. Colonization & Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture, Relire Mayotte Capécia : une femme des Antilles dans l’espace colonial français, 1916-1955 (with Myriam Cottias) and many articles on North-African literature, cinema and politics. She has co-edited several volumes, including most recently “Maryse Condé, a Writer for our Times” (with Kaiama Glover), Yale French Studies, Fall 2021. Her current book project is After Violence: Memory, Politics & the Algerian New Wave.

Click here for Day 1 information and registration.

Trailer:

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels - TIFF Trailer from Mila Turajlic on Vimeo.

About the project

The films are part of a long-term artistic research project titled Non-Aligned Newsreels. Developed via ongoing collaboration with Filmske Novosti - the Yugoslav Newsreels, it seeks to re-activate the collection of materials filmed by their cameraman across the non-aligned world, from cinematic collaborations with newly-independent countries in the 1950s to footage shot for liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s. A multimedia project spanning films, video installations, live performance and a book, and an evolving web portal at www.nonalignednewsreels.com