The Wende Museum presents a lecture-performance featuring segments of a feature-length documentary film (currently in post-production) by director Mila Turaljić, in conversation with Robeson Taj Frazier, curatorial consultant for the exhibition Nonalignment and Tito in Africa.

The life and films of Stevan Labudović reveal the political and diplomatic role played by cinema in a period of decolonization. Stevan Labudović was a cameraman of the state-run Yugoslav Newsreels, at a time when Yugoslavia took a leading role in the construction of the Nonaligned Movement, a political bloc that would oppose the Cold War stand-off between the USA and the USSR. Assigned at a young age to be the cameraman of President Tito, he followed the president on a series of historic voyages in the 1950s and ’60s. Sailing by ship as far afield as India, Indonesia, Burma, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana, and Mali, Labudović filmed up-close the key personalities of the day, from Ho Chi Minh to Kwame Nkrumah, Colonel Nasser, and Fidel Castro.

Using clips from these forgotten archives, extracts from filmed interviews with Labudović, and notes from the cameraman’s diaries, letters, and telegrams, the presentation will trace the development of this cinematic solidarity, from the exercise of soft power to the rise of information wars.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Nonalignment and Tito in Africa.