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.
Sessão #2
8 Mai / 21h30 / Cinema Trindade
Sambizanga
by Sarah Maldoror
Angola, França, 1973, 102'
Domingos Xavier, an Angolan worker and anti colonial activist, is arrested by the Portuguese secret police and taken to prison in the capital, Luanda. Determined to find her husband, Maria leaves the village with her baby on her back, aided in her quest by men and women sympathetic to her story and Domingos' cause...
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Image Retrouvée (Paris) from the 35mm original negatives, in association with Éditions René Chateau and the family of Sarah Maldoror. Funding provided by Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore and disseminate African cinema
