The News Belongs to Us!

THE NEWS BELONGS TO US! Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, and Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti / Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška, Slovenj Gradec 2017 1. MOVIES Andrej Šprah, THE UNCOMPROMISING RETURN OF NEWSREELS 11 Igor Bizjan, THE MOVIE POEMS 26 Thomas Waugh, MELTDOWNS, INTERTEXT, ANCESTORS, MARCHES, MIGRATIONS: NOTES ON NIKA AUTOR AND NEWSREEL FRONT 28 Bill Nichols, NOW. AND THEN… 40 Nika Autor, NEWSREEL SHREDS 44 Nicole Brenez, FILMIC INFORMATION, COUNTERINFORMATION, UR-INFORMATION 54 Darran Anderson, IMPRESSIONS 70 Ivan Velisavljević, SOCIALIST MODERNIZATION IS NOT THE REAL NEWS: YUGOSLAV DOCUMENTARIES OF THE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S 76 2. TRAINS Ciril Oberstar, TRAIN VIEWERS: ON FILMS AND TRAINS 87 Anja Golob, IT’S NOT THE TRAVELS 108 Svetlana Slapšak, ON THE TRAIN. UNDER THE TRAIN. A CHANGE IN ART AND RESPONSIBILITY 110 Matjaž Lunaček, THE READER 114 Anja Golob, THE BIBLE OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 118 Mirjana Dragosavljević, FROM SOLIDARITY TO SOCIALITY 120 Uroš Abram, US? 132 Jelka Zorn, NEWSREEL FRAGMENT, BELGRADE, RAILWAY STATION 138 Zdenka Badovinac, THE BROTHERHOOD AND UNITY HIGHWAY 140 3. PEOPLE Andreja Hribernik, THE LUCK OF THE DRAW AND THE PURSUIT OF (UN)HAPPINESS 147 LOTTERY TICKET 157 Anja Golob, WHAT IS HAPPINESS 158 Miklavž Komelj, SIX FRAGMENTS ON THE LOTTERY 160 Miklavž Komelj, THREE COLLAGES 169 Franco Berardi – Bifo, REELING TRUTH 172 Creative Agitation (Travis and Erin Wilkerson), 100-YEAR-OLD NEWSREEL 184 Sezgin Boynik, MEETING THE TRUTH: ON THE PRACTICE OF FILMING THE UPRISING PEOPLE 210 Igor Španjol and Vladimir Vidmar, WHERE IS THIS TRAIN GOING? SOME NON-BINDING REFLECTIONS ON ART, TOOLS AND MEANING 226 8 9 1. MOVIES Andrej Šprah THE UNCOMPROMISING RETURN OF NEWSREELS In the 1960s and 1970s, radical cinema artists in Latin America, Africa, the U.S. and Europe explored the political and aesthetic plasticity of the newsreel, previously an almost archaic cinematic convention. The newsreel became a laboratory, a training ground, a set of proposals, the call and also the response. It helped instigate and replenish the most productive period of radical film praxis: the epoch of the third cinema. In the age of YouTube, the radical newsreel awaits a spectacular, transformative re-birth.1 The intensification of tensions in social and political conflicts has always had an effect on decisive responses in the field of art. Thus, in its committed forms, filmmaking often came close to turbulent events or even directly took part in them. The series of social upheavals in recent years also caused a series of reactions in cinema. In addition to discovering new ways of representing and staging class struggles and pressing social issues, these reactions involve an intensive process of revitalising certain seemingly “ex- tinct” film genres. Certain forms of creativity that seemed to have ended up in the archives of historical periods in which they reached their peak have been returning—and more strongly than perhaps ever before. We can see that reviving the examples of radical documentary filmmaking that, until recently, were considered forgotten or at least outdated is becoming one of the important characteristics of the new political documentary. The filmmakers setting off for the new hotspots, battlefields and areas where emer- gency situations follow one after another or are simply becoming broader, deeper, obviously face creative challenges similar to the ones encountered by their predecessors from past struggles. Consequently, certain forms of committed film (such as essayis- tic or compilation documentary) that have been continuously present and have become established as the key strategies of staging social conflicts are joined by “outdated” formats of agitprop films, film pamphlets, film leaf- lets, polemical films, newsreels… It is the newsreels in particular that have expanded to such an extent that they can be considered a wholly relevant 1 This motto is an excerpt from the “Declaration” of the project Now! A Journal of Urgent Praxis, http://www.now-journal.com/declaration/ (accessed on 11 March 2017). 11 form of endeavours at liberation with filmic means and not merely a nos- talgic attempt at imitating or “romanticising a revolutionary past”. New newsreel practices constitute one of the highpoints of today’s committed, experimental and innovative documentary filmmaking, which also openly professes its commitment to its history. More specifically, its commitment to the segment that would most adequately be named anti-newsreel; for it was in the 1960s that, through the historical development of an approach that, in the hands of power, served as a means of systemic indoctrination, newsreels were transformed into an expressly oppositional practice. The revival of newsreel activities today takes place both at the level of individual creativity and of collective engagement. At the level of personal endeavours, the following cineastes and activists follow the newsreel principles: Sylvain George, Jem Cohen, Alex Reuben and Donald Foreman. The most exciting among the collective initiatives are perhaps the work of the British activist collective Reel News, Now! A Journal of Urgent Praxis from the US, and Newsreel Front, an ad hoc collective from Slovenia. In addition to the series of new initiatives, there still operate two organisations in the US that are direct successors of the American militant movement Newsreel; more precisely, their units from New York and San Francisco—California Newsreel and Third World Newsreel.2 The first retained the name and the mission of the original collective and focuses primarily on aspects of racism, supporting the Afro-American communities in their efforts for social change and ultimate emancipation. The second internationalised at the beginning of the 1970s, when its direct engagement came to an end in the revolutionary seething, assumed the synonym of “underdevelopment” encapsulated in the concept of the “third world”, and began to spread its knowledge and experience among the unprivi- leged communities in various hotspots of global oppression. The activities of both organisations gradually extended from the production of militant newsreels in the 1960s to practically all forms of filmmaking, but their goal has remained the same—to work for social change and equality: “Ultimate- ly, whether documentary, experimental, narrative, traditional or non-traditional, the importance of the media promoted by the organization is its ability to effect social change, to encourage people to think critically about their lives and the lives of others, and to propel people into action.”3 Today, 2 The Newsreel movement was established in 1967 in New York, but it was soon organised as a network of units in other US hotspots. In the movement, which after 1970 began to transform and internationalise, almost a hundred filmmakers cooperated, making over forty medium-length and short films. 3 https://www.twn.org/twnpages/about/about_1.aspx (accessed on 2 March 2017). 12 their basic activities are no longer connected so much to their own film practice, but rather to providing support and help to those who want to obtain the right to speak, the possibility to express their opinion and form a suitable, unique articulation. News from the front We shall begin our discussion of current newsreel activities by con- sidering a reflection that refers to individual filmmaking, but points out the general determinations of all the variants of the mentioned “comeback”. In his “News on the March”, published in the 2013 February issue of Sight and Sound, Kieron Corless discusses current newsreel activities as a revival that is directly connected to a “new wave of 21st-century protest movements”. He focuses on the work of Jem Cohen, Alex Reuben and Sylvain George and on their recording of current confrontational campaigns. His “summa- ry” of the interventions of three independent, activist filmmakers can easily be read as a unique manifesto of the new urgent newsreel practices: Central to each undertaking is a desire not to propagandise but to honour complex realities and counter simplifying and politically partisan media-imposed narratives; to bear witness and pay homage to ordinary people of every stripe imbued with the spirit of revolt in the wake of the financial crisis; to build an archive for the future of potentially overlooked moments, of battles fought and lost, to capture history being made from below; to immerse viewers in those moments and get something out there fast, using all currently available distribution networks. (Corless: 74) This reflection also corresponds to the strategies of operation and the endeavours of new collective initiatives. The collective that has retained the most original newsreel approaches is the British activist collective Reel News. A completely independent and “non-aligned” organisation based in London operates in the spirit of their motto “In the global war between rich and poor, we need news from the frontline.” Such a point of departure reflects the tendency to take part in a series of direct actions and initiatives, using film as a tool to effect social changes. Their main endeavours are directed towards spreading information about activities aimed at solving problems caused by austerity measures in Europe, the outbreaks of war in various parts of the world or global climate and environmental changes. They define their role both on the broader informational and the directly activist level. They emphasise that they “work with

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