Serbian documentary maker Mila Turajlic has built a slender but impressive canon of archive-driven essay-films that critically interrogate the political and cultural legacy of the former Yugoslavia in a witty, humane manner that has award-winning appeal to international audiences. After earning warm reviews and festival prizes with Cinema Komunisto (2011) and the more personal The Other Side of Everything (2017), Turajlic returns to raid her former homeland’s cinematic vaults again with her latest project, Cine-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels, which illuminates a little-known connection between Cold War Yugoslavia and Algeria’s anti-colonial liberation struggle.
Making its European debut at Dok Leipzig festival this week following its Toronto world premiere last month, Ciné-Guerrillas is a more urgent and timely film than its cumbersome title and slow-paced opening may initially suggest. This is not just a local-interest story from the dusty back pages of history, but a nuanced examination of national myth-making and cultural propaganda that speaks to our current climate of fake news and growing state censorship. Turajlic’s prize-winning track record and lucid treatment of complex material will open more festival doors, although specialist art-house platforms, academics and Cold War history buffs are likely to be her niche audience.
The film’s title refers to Stevan Labudovic (1926-2017), who was former Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito’s favourite cameraman. In 1959, Tito sent Labudovic to Algeria to aid the ALN guerrilla army document their long and bloody war against French occupation. In a harsh colonial regime where Algerians were not even allowed to film themselves, the Yugoslav visitor was tasked with helping to generate propaganda newsreel images to counter the one-sided French media narrative, which was supported by diplomatic soft power around the world. He embedded himself with the fighters for more than three years, sending home thousands of cans of film. Some was screened around the world in newsreels, but most has never been seen in public before.
Besides digging out Labudovic’s vast stash of footage from piles of rusting canisters in the former Yugoslavian state film archive, which still exists even though the country does not, Turajlic also tracks down the man himself, a late octogenarian at the time of filming. Despite being a little deaf and creaky, he proves to be a wry and sparky interviewee, slipping into professional cameraman mode mode at times: “what are you doing?” he protests in one revealing exchange, “your lens is dirty!” Helpfully, Labudovic also kept a detailed journal while in Algeria, which becomes an extra resource for Turajlic as she forensically retraces his North African mission using a patchwork of archive footage, diary entries and contemporary interview material.
In its early stages, Ciné-Guerrillas has the feel of a small, parochial two-hander about a minor chapter from Yugoslavia’s un-remembered history. Labudovic is an engaging storyteller, while the crisp monochrome footage and countless stills that he took of the Algerian army in action undoubtedly have curiosity value and historical interest, especially the staged battle scenes that he personally disowned for looking fake. But they would make for a skimpy documentary on their own.
Midway through the film, thankfully, Turajlic bids her main protagonist goodbye and flies to Algeria to meet with several his former battlefield comrades, opening up an initially subjective solo story to multiple viewpoints and ideological interpretations. Mostly still remarkably well-groomed old gentlemen in their seventies and eighties, these retired soldiers and ex-commanders share their warm memories of Labudovic. They also affirm the priceless propaganda value of cinema, radio and pop music as political weapons for a population that was largely poor and illiterate, a situation which suited their French rulers.
Turajlic then jets to the United Nations in New York, where veteran activists recall the historic 1961 vote that finally made Algerian independence from France an unstoppable reality. In these later sections, Ciné-Guerrillas feels less like a dry history lesson and more like a timely lesson in how history itself is made, filmed, edited, rewritten, contested and often censored.
Ciné-Guerrillas has clearly been a long-term project for Turajlic, given that Labudovic died in 2017. The film ends with a dedication to him, but their fruitful screen collaboration is not done yet. A second chapter in this diptych based on the veteran cameraman’s work, titled Non-Aligned, will premiere at IDFA in Amsterdam in November. The roots of both films may lie deep in the Cold War, but the issues they raise are still live, especially with brutal neo-imperial powers like Russian attempting to re-colonise Ukraine and other nations, backed by a massive state propaganda machine. As Turajlic puts it, “images of battles become battles over images.”
Director, cinematography: Mila Turajlic
Producers: Carine Chichkowsky, Mila Turajlic
Editing: Sylvie Gadmer, Anne Renardet, Mila Turajlic
Music: Troy Herion
Sound: Aleksandar Protic
Music: Troy Herron
Production companies: Poppy Pictures (Serbia), Survivance (France), Restart (Croatia), Kino (Montenegro)
Venue: Dok Liepzig Film Festival (International Competition)
In Serbian, French, Arabic, English
94 minutes
