Mila Turajlić talks about cinema, memory and political resistance at ULusfona

On 19 February, ULusófona - Porto University Centre, as part of the 1st edition of the Great Artists on Campus Conference Cycle, welcomed the Yugoslav filmmaker Mila Turajlić for an extra session in partnership with the Teatro Municipal do Porto.

The artist delivered a masterclass focused on her research into decolonisation, liberation movements and the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement.

For several years, Mila Turajlić worked with previously unseen cinematic archives from Yugoslav newsreels, collaborating with Stevan Labudović, camera operator to President Tito, who documented Tito’s travels across Africa and Asia. The artist explored these images to analyse how cinema contributed to giving voice to a world undergoing decolonisation, proposing the concept of unpredictable past in most of her films.

In the masterclass, Turajlić spoke about Serbia and the erasure of the memory of former Yugoslavia, also addressing the privatisation of a public collection of Yugoslav films as an example of the erasure of a country’s art and history. The artist discussed the importance of preserving and transmitting memory and history as a form of political resistance, inviting the audience to reflect on the role of cinema in constructing and preserving the political imagination of past eras.

The extra session of Great Artists on Campus #1 offered students and participants the opportunity to delve into rare and little-known archives and to explore processes of decolonisation and cultural memory through cinema.

View the Event Photographs on ULusófona’s Facebook

Text
Bruna Pereira

Photography
Paulo Renato