Re-aligning Yugoslavia

The Construction of Alterity in the Yugoslav Newsreels

Abstract

During the 1960s, Filmske Novosti (the state-run Yugoslav Newsreels) played a key role in the representation of President Josip Broz Tito’s international travels. Tito visited newly independent African and Asian countries in search of political alliances, and the newsreel reports framed these diplomatic travels as solidarity performances. Assigning two cameramen to follow the presidential trips Filmske Novosti produced a series of portraits of nascent nation states and their receptions of Tito, accentuating a discourse of similarity and unity as a challenge to Western political hegemony. As Yugoslav Newsreels extended their reach, exchanging these reports with a total of 40 countries by the end of the 1960s, their work became an influential medium advocating the process of decolonization in the international arena. This article looks at the legacy and perspective they offer in constructing narratives of an ‘alternate’ representation of non-aligned countries to Yugoslav audiences. It further argues that this strategy of representation had significant consequences for the political situation within Yugoslavia. In 1968, this narrative resulted in a public sentiment of solidarity and identification which became evident in the protests that erupted in Yugoslavia, revealing how the internal political narrative was also reshaped in terms of alterity.