Sarah Maldoror, A Life of Poetry and Struggles
A Film Program curated by François Piron
Sarah Maldoror was a filmmaker whose work remains linked to the fight for independence in several African nations in the 1960s and 1970s, to which she dedicated many of her films. Born in the southern French city of Condom in 1929, she made her first appearance in the Parisian scene in the mid-1950s, already bearing her chosen name of Maldoror, the evil hero of the Chants of Comte de Lautréamont, rediscovered by the Surrealists and quoted by Aimé Césaire in his Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) as "the iron man forged by capitalist society.”
A student at the Sorbonne university, Sarah Maldoror founded Les Griots, the first theatre company of black actresses and actors in France, that will be become nationally famous for staging the play The Blacks by Jean Genet. Yet Maldoror was already elsewhere: in Africa with her companion Mário Pinto de Andrade, in Moscow to study cinema, then in Algiers, Martinique, Saint-Denis...
This program is part of Spring Seminar 2025 Politics of Curatorship.
Session #1 - From the colonial oppression to the liberation
7 Mai / Auditório Ilídio Pinho / 18:30
Monangambééé
by Sarah Maldoror
Argélia, 1969, 17'
A cultural misunderstanding ends in a tragedy. With little dialogue, Sarah Maldoror's first film lets bodies and music (the free jazz of the Art Ensemble of Chicago) speak for themselves, giving voice to the resistance of the Angolan people against Portuguese colonialism. Monangambeee was the rallying cry for the resistance’s call to arms in the Angola war of independence.
À Bissau, Le Carnaval
by Sarah Maldoror
Guiné Bissau, 1980, 18'
Since Guinea-Bissau gained independence in 1974 after five centuries of Portuguese colonization, people have celebrated the annual carnival in Bissau, the country's capital. The country’s president Luis Cabral explains how they appropriated the popular event as a means of collectively constructing an imaginary world that reversed the relations of colonial domination.
Fogo, Île de Feu
by Sarah Maldoror
Cabo Verde, 1979, 34'
On the volcanic island of Fogo, in Cape Verde, the celebration of a legendary story inherited from the Portuguese colonizers continues on May 1st. On this rocky, waterless and wind-battered island, the legend gives rise to jousts in tournaments and horse races appreciated by the locals.
