Newsreel 55: What Side Are You on?

The text examines Newsreel 55 (Filmski obzornik), a project by Nika Autor made in cooperation with Marko Bratina, Jurij Meden and Ciril Oberstar, which has revived the tradition of this particular documentary genre, which ended in Slovenia in the 1950s. While the film affirms the genre, it at the same time subverts some of its basic elements. At the thematic level, it strives to preserve its purposefulness which has an expressly political and utilitarian charge, while undermining the formal newsreel characteristics by adding elements of other documentary (sub)genres. Instead of the effort to strengthen the documentary vision of authenticity, we are faced with questions and reflections about the search for the most suitable image to convey the class struggle, which opens the self-reflective dimensions of the project, thus adding an essayistic air to it. The film thereby confirms the belief that the revitalisation of established film forms inevitably involves the consciousness about the necessity of their re-consideration and re-formulation every time they are brought back to life for the needs of liberatory struggles.

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