Staged as a three-channel video installation, Two Meetings and a Funeral by Naeem Mohaiemen is set as a slow-paced documentary spotlighting the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algiers, Algeria. Historically, the Non-Aligned Movement’s initiation was a product of the 1955 Bandung Conference that called for Asian and African solidarity, proposing for an alternative economic order outside American and Soviet spheres of influence. This movement is often described as the Third World liberation and solidarity project. Told through the historian Vijay Prashad who has written extensively on the Third World project, the film travels to various localities exploring how the movement came to be articulated in political rhetoric, architecture and art. Traveling through the residue of transnational architecture (Niemeyer, Moretti, Le Corbusier) in Algiers, Dhaka, and New York, alongside figures, Samia Zennadi, Atef Berredjem, Amirul Islam, and Zonayed Saki, the film explores the tension between the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Mohaiemen's focus on the 1973 meeting highlights the misrecognitions of solidarity, which could not overcome the internal contradictions brought upon by independence from colonial rule. Capturing the unsteady alliance of Socialist-leaning state leaders, 1973–74 was a pivotal crossroad in this movement which eventually led to its decline from 1979 onwards. The film also features archival footage of Singapore politician S. Rajaratnam, whose speech in the opening establishes the premise of the work. Rajaratnam's appearance also cements Singapore initial involvement in the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1970s.
