RE-ACTIVATING THE ARCHIVE
PROJECT CREATOR: Mila Turajlić
WORKSHOPS CO-CREATOR & CREATIVE PRODUCER: Maja Medić
PERFORMANCE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Barbara Matijević
Since 2015, filmmaker and archival artist Mila Turajlić has been researching the non-aligned collection of the Yugoslav archives, seeking to 'project' the images forward - via critical writing, lecture performances, video installations, exhibitions and online content.
From the films made by Yugoslav cameramen accompanying President Tito's 'Voyages of Peace' across the non-aligned world in the 1950s and 1960s, to the footage they shot for liberation movements and newly-independent countries in the 1970s, and the collaborative film projects covering the Non-Aligned Summits up until 1989, the aim is to explore the ways the filmic image chronicled the birth of a political project, becoming at the same time the vehicle through which this community was constituted and their vision narrated.
Developed via ongoing collaboration with Filmske Novosti - the Yugoslav Newsreels - the research project includes critical writing and visual installation projects. Beginning with a series of presentations and exchanges with academic scholars studying the re-surging field of non-alignment and Yugoslavia's role in the creation of the movement, the project expanded into the visual art field in 2019 via participation in Southern Constellations: The Poetics of the Non-Aligned exhibition curated by Bojana Piškur, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana. Mila also developed the project as a series of audiovisual performance lectures that she performed internationally.
In 2020 Maja Medic joined the project as co-creator and producer. The project was selected prestigious Cph:Lab in 2021, during which they developed their concept of collaborative workshops under the mentorship of Katerina Cizek (Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab).
In 2022 the curator of the Berlin Biennale, Kader Attia, commissioned a piece for the Biennale based on the research materials and archives Stevan Labudovic had filmed for the Algerian Liberation Movement, titled screen/solidarity/silence: debris from the Labudovic Reels. The same year a video installation and workshop were commissioned for the Belgrade Biennale (Oktobarski Salon), and a live performance of the silent screening workshop was performed at De Balie as part of IDFA on Stage.
In 2023 Mila and Maja co-curated their first exhibition stemming from the project in 2023 at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade, and conceived a public collaborative silent screening workshop with Aurelie Charon (Radiolive) for the Theatre Nationale de Bretagne.
In 2024 Mila held silent screening workshops in Cairo and Maputo, and in 2025 workshops were held Algiers, at Spielart in Germany and Maputo again.
upcoming LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Vidy Lausanne, February 24-28 2026
upcoming LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Teatro Municipal do Porto, February 2026
upcoming LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Théâtre de la Bastille Saison 25/26, Paris, April 9-16, 2026
2025 TALK The Afterlives of Non-Alignment: Memory, Legacy, and Contemporary Resonances, Amsterdam, November 14, 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE le Quai à Angers
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Opening night Lo schermo dell'arte, Florence, November 12, 2025
2025 EXHIBITION and WORKSHOP Maputo, October 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Festival EuroScènes, Leipzig, November 7-8, 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY, WORKSHOP, EXHIBITION & FILM SCREENINGS Spielart Festival Munich, October 17-22, 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Festival des Libertés, Theatre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Brussels, October 13, 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE FIT Festival International de théâtre, Lugano, October 5, 2025
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Public Trust, Philadephia
2025 PANEL Visible Evidence Conference, Philadelphia
2025 MASTERCLASS & SCREENINGS, Cinémathèque d’Alger, Algiers
2025 GROUP EXHIBITION and WORKSHOP Institut Francais, Algiers, June
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Les Rencontres à l'échelle, Marseille
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Kunstenfestivaldesarts (5 nights)
2025 TALK with Elaine Mokhtefi, Doc! x La Clef Revival en partenariat avec Paroles d’Honneur, Paris
2025 ARTIST TALK | University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris
2025 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Sharjah Biennial Opening Week
2024 SCREENING & TALK with ELAINE MOKHTEFI, CUNY hosted by Maura McCreight, New York
2024 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE Theatre National de Bretagne, Saison '24-'25, Rennes - Nov 20, 21 & 22
2024 PUBLIC WORKSHOP | commissioned by the Sharjah Biennale'25
2024 PUBLIC WORKSHOP | Museu do Cinema em Moçambique @ Cinema Scala, Maputo
2024 PRESENTATION | Encontros do Patrimonio Audiovisual, Maputo
2024 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | L'image dans les blancs de l'histoire, Séminaire automnale du Bal et l'EHESS, Paris
2024 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | MG+MSUM, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana
2024 LECTURE PERFORMANCE | “Our Dream has the size of freedom. Retrieving fragments of ciné-solidarities from the Yugoslav film archives” , Radical Film Network conference, Madrid
2024 TALK with ELAINE MOKHTEFI, Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris (satellite program Ces voix qui m'assiègent...)
2024 GROUP EXHIBITION Ces voix qui m'assiègent... sous le commissariat d'Émilie Goudal et Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Cité internationale des arts, Paris
2024 PANEL | Archives for the Future, DocSheffield, Sheffield
2024 TALK, PANEL & SCREENING Festival Etonnants Voyageurs, Saint-Malo
2024 PUBLIC WORKSHOP | Ruche documentaire, FIDADOC, Agadir, Morocco
2024 LECTURE PERFORMANCE | Hronike jugoslovenske filmske solidarnosti: Dragutin Popović i Frelimo, Nesvrstani i kulturne veze | Muzej Jugoslavije, Belgrade
2024 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | DocHouse, London
2024 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | Réimaginer le fragmentaire : mise-en-recit d'une archive, cycle "La recherche et ses récits" programmé par Pascale Cassagnau, Le Bal, Paris
2024 PUBLIC WORKSHOP | Panorama of European Cinema, Cairo
2023 LECTURE PERFORMANCE | Former Portuguese Colonies: Media and Decolonization, Rome
2023 VIDEO PERFORMANCE | Film-Act: Third Cinema and It's Legacies, Cairo
2023 PUBLIC WORKSHOP | Theatre Nationale de Bretagne, Rennes
2023 EXHIBITION | Arhivski život nesvrstanih, curated by Dina Pokrajac with Maja Medić, KIC, Zagreb
2023 BOOK CHAPTER | "Flotsam & Jetsam" in Accidental Activism: Shaping Cinema's Future with Remnants of the Past, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.
2023 LECTURE/PANEL | post Presents: Unsettled Dust—Archives, Epistemologies, Images, MoMA, New York
2023 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | Archival Assembly Festival, Cinema Transtopia, Berlin
2023 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | Eye International Conference, Eye Museum, Amsterdam
2023 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | Crossing the Line with Mila Turajlic, Scottish Documentary Institute, Edinburgh
2023 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE | Faire parler les archives des non-alignés x Chaillot Expérience curated by Aurelie Charon and Amelie Bonnin | Theatre Nationale de Chaillot, Paris
2023 LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE| Non-Aligned Newsreels: Fragments #4 | The Mosaic Rooms, London
2023 EXHIBITION | Arhivski omnibus: Jugoslovenska svedočanstva o alžirskoj revoluciji, Museum of African Art, Belgrade
2023 BOOK CHAPTER | In Paul Stubbs (ed.) "Socialist Yugoslavia, Social Policy and the Non-Aligned Movement ", McGill-Queen's University Press
2022 PERFORMANCE | Non-Aligned Newsreels: Fragments #2 – New Voices from the Summit, IDFA on Stage, Amsterdam
2022 EXHIBITION & PERFORMANCE | 59th October salon (Belgrade Biennale),
2022 TALK | Three Archives in Conversation | Columbia University Institute of Ideas & Imagination, Paris
2022 PRESENTATION | Scenes from the Non-Aligned Newsreels, Bandung-Belgrade-Havana Commemorative Conference at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta
2022 | EXHIBITION | screen/solidarity/silence: debris from the Labudovic Reels, Berlin Biennale (curator Kader Attia), Berlin
2022 | TALK | The Cinematic Image of the Non-Aligned Movement, University of Leipzig
2022 | TALK | Narratives of Transnational Solidarity in the Archives of Yugoslav Newsreels, CREES Lecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2021 | CONVERSATION | Ciné-collaborations between Yugoslavia and African countries as gestures of anti-colonial solidarity, with Aboubakar Sanogo and Jihan el-Tahri, Visible Evidence, Frankfurt
2021 | PANEL | Archive Alive! From Repository to Resource, Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah
2021 | PRESENTATION | Archives of Solidarity: Yugoslav Newsreels and the Non-Aligned World, Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York
2021 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | The Labudović Reels: Cinematic Solidarity Across the Non-Aligned World, Columbia University - Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris
2021 | PHOTO ESSAY | "Solidarity Must Be Defended" Anthology on Transnational Solidarity, edited by Eszter Szakács and Naeem Mohaiemen
2021 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | Debris from complex vessels - fragments from the non-aligned newsreels, Adrift residency curated by Bahía Colectiva @ Los Angeles Filmforum, Los Angeles
2021 | PRESENTATION | Towards a Conjuctural Political Economy of Non-Alignment and Cultural Politics, Rijeka
2021 | EXHIBITION | Južna sazvedja: politike nesvrstanih, curated by Bojana Piškur, Drugo more, Rijeka
2021 | ARTIST'S TALK | Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research- Comuna AV group, hosted by Vijay Prashad
2021 | WORKSHOP | New Alphabet School # Survivance, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Porto
2021 | TALK | Naeem Mohaiemen in conversation with Mila Turajlic on Cinema Komunisto, Oberhauzen Film Festival kurzfilmtage channel
2021 | ARTIST'S TALK | Home Workspace Program (HWP) led by Rasha Salti, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut
2021 | PRESENTATION | Screen Solidarities: Yugoslavia’s cinematic links to the non-aligned world, The Non-Aligned Movement & Socialist Yugoslavia conference
2021 | ARTICLE | "Filmske Novosti - Filmed Diplomacy" in Nationalities Papers, the peer-reviewed journal of ASN. Special issue: “Internationalism in Times of Nationalism”
2021 | CINÉ-CONFERENCE | The 1961 Belgrade NAM Conference Archives | Bandung Spirit - The Rise of Asia Conference, France
2020 | PRESENTATION | Stevan Labudović: Yugoslavia’ s ciné-collaborations with liberation movements, Solidarity of Art, Qattan Foundation, Ramallah
2020 | PRESENTATION | Resurrecting the filmed archives of a disappeared country, Reframing Africa 2020, Wits School of Arts Film & Television, Johannesburg
2020 | CINÉ-CONFERENCE | ONU 1960: "Le plus grand show da le planete", Rendez-vous de l'histoire, Blois
2019 | PRESENTATION | Arab Documentary Convention, Leipzig
2019 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | Belgrade Conférence / La naissance des non-alignés, Odeon Theatre, Paris
2019 | EXHIBITION | Southern Constellations: The Poetics of the Non-Aligned, Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
2019 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | The Labudovic Reels, The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles
2018 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | Orphan Film Symposium, Museum of the Moving Image, New York
2018 | ARTIST'S TALK Cinéastes au travail dans le cadre de La fabrique des films, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2017 | PERFORMANCE LECTURE | Yugoslav Films from the Non-Aligned Movement, Orphelins de Paris, Cinémathèque française, Paris
2017 | PRESENTATION | Visible Evidence Conference, Buenos Aires
2017 | ARTIST'S TALK | Something You Should Know - artist's seminar curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, EHESS, Paris
2017 | ARTICLE | “Filmske novosti – Filmska diplomatija”, in Marko Jelić (ed.), Alžir-Beograd jubilej prijateljstva 1962-2017: 55 godina nezavisnosti Alžira. Beograd: Društvo prijatelja Alžira, 170-177.
2017 | ARTICLE | “Re-aligning Yugoslavia: The Construction of Alterity in the Yugoslav Newsreels”, On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture.
2016 | PRESENTATION | Museum of Yugoslav History: A Non-Aligned Museum, Belgrade
2016 | PRESENTATION | (Re)Thinking Yugoslav Internationalism, Graz