Time Never Regained: Film, Memory and History in Mila Turajlić’s Labudović Reels

Radunović Dušan ()
Additional contact information
Radunović Dušan: School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University, Durham, UK

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2024, vol. 72, issue 2, 256-269

Abstract: The article reviews the documentary film diptych The Labudović Reels by film-maker Mila Turajlić. Based on her archival work at the Filmske Novosti production company, Turajlić discovers the legacy of hitherto unknown cinematographer Stevan Labudović. Both films are hybrid documentaries that combine archive footage with interview-style documentary, and both focus on two intertwined thematic cycles – Labudović’s coverage of the Algerian war of independence (1959–1961) and the first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (1960–1961). Conceptually, Turajlić’s films engage thought-provoking matrixes, among them Pierre Nora’s lieux de memoire and, more especially, Walter Benjamin’s reflections on historical progress. This review finds that the implementation of the latter blurs the boundary between the critique of the idea of progress and historical relativism, which leads to the confusing presence of mutually exclusive voices in Turajlić’s film, one calling for the reappropriation of the past, and another calling that same past into question.

Keywords: documentary cinema; Yugoslavia; Algeria; anti-colonialism; Non-Aligned Movement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2024-0008 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:soeuro:v:72:y:2024:i:2:p:256-269:n:9

DOI: 10.1515/soeu-2024-0008

Access Statistics for this article

Comparative Southeast European Studies is currently edited by Sabine Rutar

More articles in Comparative Southeast European Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().