Non-Aligned Film Programme: Third Way / After Bandung

This film programme was originally intended to be screened on-site in parallel with the exhibition Non-Aligned. During Singapore’s Circuit-Breaker period, selected films were available to be streamed on our website for limited periods of time, even after the Centre re-opened to the public on 27 June 2020. As of 18 August 2020, the Film Programme is being screened exclusively on site in the Single Screen, with limited capacity and physical distancing measures in place. NTU CCA Singapore gratefully acknowledges the collaboration of the curators, filmmakers, and distributors in making online screening possible during the global COVID-19 crisis.

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This programme features films that engage post-colonial processes covering different moments and geopolitical contexts. The Asian-African Conference in 1955, known as the Bandung Conference, amidst the complex processes of decolonization, established self-determination, non-aggression, and equality as part of the core values that then formed the Non-Aligned Movement. This history is unpacked and contextualised through this series of screenings.

Co-curated by writer and curator Mark Nash and film researcher Vladimir Seput.

Screening on loop during opening hours.

Joris Ivens, Indonesia Calling, 1946 
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 22 min

This film shows the role trade union seaman and waterside workers in Sydney played in Indonesia’s independence struggle after World War II. Comprising different nationalities and races, they united together to prevent the departure of Indonesia-bound Dutch ships that carried weapons meant to bring the Indonesian National Revolution to a halt. The film seeks to distil aspects of the historical context of the events depicted in the film and gives insight to the major re-alignments in the relationship between Australia and Indonesia.

4 – 16 August 2020 (On loop in The Single Screen and also available online) 
First conference of Non-Aligned Movement, 1961
Archive footage, colour, sound, 10 min 51 sec

Archive footage from the first conference of the 1961 Non-Aligned Movement, otherwise known as the Belgrade Conference, presenting historical events from the meeting. The inaugural conference was initiated by three key figures: Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia; Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt; and Jawaharlal Nehru, First Prime Minister of India. Attended by 25 countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the conference is a direct response to the division of sphere of influence settled between the major world forces after WWII and the Cold War, enabling members to independently formulate their own position in international politics.

18 – 23 August 2020 (On loop in The Single Screen)
Ousmane Sembène, Borom Sarret, 1963
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 18 min

Borom Sarret, considered to be the first African film by a black African, is a portrayal of poverty and inequality in postcolonial Africa. It follows the daily life of a Dakar “borom sarret”, or cart driver in Wolof (a language of Senegal), who is constantly being taken advantage of by others. Feeling hopeless about his situation, he compares modern life to that of a working slave, imprisoned in a cycle of poverty.  

Restored in 2013 by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in association with Institut National de l’Audiovisuel and the Sembène Estate. Restoration work was carried out at Laboratoires Éclair and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Restoration funding provided by Doha Film Institute. 

Mikhail Kalatozov, I am Cuba (Soy Cuba), 1964
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 141 min

Narrated by Raquel Ravuelta, a seminal figure in Cuban theatre, film, television and radio, as “The Voice of Cuba,” I am Cuba follows four stories of Cubans during the Cuban Revolution. Maria works at a Havana nightclub; Pedro is a tenant farmer; Enrique, a young university student, is part of the intellectual resistance; and Mariano is a peasant who joins the rebel army. The script was co-authored by the Cuban novelist Enrique Pineda Barnet and the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

25 – 30 August 2020 (Every hour in The Single Screen)
Ousmane Sembène, Black Girl (La noire de… ), 1966 
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 60 min

The film chronicles Senegal’s first years of independence by following a young ambitious woman, Diouana, who moves to the French Riviera with a bureaucrat and his wife who return to France after working in Dakar. Originally hired as the family nanny, she becomes enslaved as a maid in France. A human drama and a radical political statement, Black Girl critiques the enduring colonial mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Black Girl was Ousmane Sembène’s first feature film and the first black African feature film which screened at Cannes. It alsowon the Prix Jean Vigo and top prize at the Carthage Film Festival. 

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of The Film Foundation. 
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna/ L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Sembène Estate, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, INA, Eclair laboratories and the Centre National de Cinématographie. Restoration funded by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. 

1 – 6 September 2020 (12pm, 1.45pm, 3.30pm, 5.15pm in The Single Screen)
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 97 min

The film’s narrative, based on the novel Inconsolable Memories by Edmundo Desnoes, is presented through the lens of Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, during the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. His family decides to retreat to Miami during the turmoil of social changes. The film is interspersed with real-life documentary footage of protest and political events in which Sergio’s life and personal relationship unfolds. As the threat of foreign invasion looms over Sergio, his desire for companionship also intensifies. 

Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’ Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC). Restoration funded by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.

8 – 20 September 2020 (12pm, 1.30pm, 3pm, 4.30pm, 5.45pm in The Single Screen)
Želimir Žilnik, Early Works (Rani Radovi), 1969
35mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 58 min

Winner of the Golden Berlin Bear Award at the 19^th Berlin International Film Festival, Early Works (Ravi Radovi) focuses on the June 1968 student demonstrations in Belgrade, as well as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the same year. Both incidents happened against an international backdrop of student protests, political movements and anti-colonial struggles around the world. In the film, three young men and a girl called Yugoslava attempt to start a revolution in the countryside after being inspired by the early writings by Karl Marx, but are unsuccessful.

8 – 20 September 2020 (In The Single Screen)
Želimir Žilnik, Shorts: Black Film (Cri Film), 1971
16 mm transferred to digital file, b&w, sound, 14 min

An example of the Yugoslav Black Wave, the film movement in Yugoslavia in the 1960s to 1970s, Shorts: Black Film (Cri Film) is a spontaneous effort by Žilnik to highlight socio-political issues. In the wee hours, he approaches six homeless men on the streets of Novi Sad. Žilnik interviews them and allows them to sleep over at his home. Over the next few days, he speaks to members of the public, social workers, and the police, but nobody is able to offer any solutions. 

Karpo Godina, Litany of Happy People (Zdravi ljudi za razonodu), 1971 
35mm transferred to digital file, colour, sound, 15 min

The Litany of Happy People is a song-film about the diverse group of people living harmoniously in rural Vojvodina, an autonomous province of Serbia known for its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic identity. The film presents families with multi-ethnic backgrounds, standing in front of their seemingly similar but colourful rural houses. The film won numerous awards at short film festivals.

Karpo Godina, About Art of Love or a Film with 14441 Frames (O ljubavnim veštinama ili film sa 14441 kvadratom), 1972 
Colour, sound, 10 min

This film presents an almost journalistic report of the female textile workers and male military soldiers in the Macedonian village of Stip. Interwoven with military footage and shots of the village, the alternating scenes present the two groups in proximity, while being completely isolated.  The film went through a thorough restoration process in 2016 and was shown at the 30th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy. 

22 – 27 September 2020 (12pm, 1.30pm, 3pm, 4.30pm, 5.45pm in The Single Screen)
Isaac Julien, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask, 1995
35mm transferred to digital file, colour, sound, 70 min

This film interrogates the life and work of Frantz Fanon, a highly influential anti-colonial writer, civil rights activist, and psychoanalytic theorist from Martinique. The docudrama is interspersed with archival footage of Fanon as well as interviews with family members and colleagues. Reflecting on the black body and its representations, the film is rooted in the black arts movement in Britain and North America.