Re-aligning Yugoslavia

The Construction of Alterity in the Yugoslav Newsreels

During the 1960s, Filmske Novosti (the Yugoslav Newsreels) [1] played a central role in shaping the social discourse surrounding Yugoslavia’s political orientation towards the Third World. Since President Josip Broz Tito was pursuing an independent path in foreign policy, Filmske Novosti’s project entailed the construction of a new narrative that depicted solidarity rather than otherness; this narrative can be traced through a study of the newsreels. The shifting of the mode of representation of non-aligned countries to Yugoslav audiences corresponded to the political and diplomatic strategy of the Yugoslav government to build alliances with African and Asian countries. […]