Sarah Maldoror

Sarah Maldoror is the author of some forty films making up a multiple and rebellious work, made of fiction, documentary and poetry, and interpreted by a war song: the short film Monangambée, shot in 1969 in Algiers where she was then living, which evokes the torture by the Portuguese colonial army of a sympathizer of the struggle for the liberation of Angola, visited in prison by his company. Before becoming a pioneer of pan-African cinema, Sarah Maldoror lived part of her youth in Paris where, passionate about theater and received at the school in rue Blanche (according to her friend, the future Ivorian filmmaker Timité Bassori, they are among the first black students to enter), she co-founded in 1956 with the same Bassori, Toto Bissainthe, Ababacar Samb Makharam and Robert Liensol the company Les Griots, which became the first black theater company in France. The Tragedy of King Christophe by Aimé Césaire and Les Nègres by Jean Genet (directed by Roger Blin) are among the plays created by the troupe, which Maldoror presides for a time, with the material help and intellectual support of Alioune Diop, founder in 1947 of the important Parisian anti-colonialist review Présence africaine. In 1961, Sarah Maldoror left France and went to study at the VGIK, the Moscow film school, before joining the African decolonization movements (in Algeria, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau) with her companion Mario Pinto de Andrade, whom he met in Paris and co-founder of the Movement for the Liberation of Angola, in exile during the war of independence (1961-1975) against the Portuguese metropolis. It was in Algiers, where she settled in 1966, that she made her debut on the cinematographic front of the anti-colonial struggles: assistant on the Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966) and Pan-African Festival of Algiers 1969, documentary by William Klein, she quickly made her first film, followed by a lost film shot in Guinea-Bissau and a first "fiction" feature film, Sambizanga (1972). Filmed in the Republic of Congo, based on an Angolan novel by José Luandino Vieira, adapted by his companion Pinto de Andrade with the French writer Maurice Pons, Sambizanga takes place in 1961 and describes the repression of the Angolan Liberation Movement from point of view of Maria, wife of a revolutionary activist imprisoned and tortured by the Portuguese army, who sets out to find him across the country. Shot with real actors from the struggle then in progress, and one of the first African films directed by a woman in the history of cinema, Sambizanga remains seen and visible today - it is easily found on the Internet. Leaving Algeria following a disagreement with the hierarchy of the FLN in power (some sources mention that she was imprisoned and then expelled from the country), Sarah Maldoror settled in France, in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis ), and continues to make films. His work includes documentaries (shot in Seine-Saint-Denis, Martinique, Guyana or Cape Verde for Fogo, the island of fire in 1978) and numerous portraits of artists and writers (the poets Léon Gontran-Damas, Aimé Césaire, Assia Djebar, René Depestre or Louis Aragon, singer Toto Bissainthe, musician Archie Shepp). Visible on the site of the CNRS video library, a 1974 short film, And the Dogs Are Silenced, shot in the reserves of the Musée de l'homme dedicated to objects from black Africa, adapted from extracts from the play of the same name by Aimé Césaire, with the actor Gabriel Glissant (seen in Soleil O du grand Med Hondo) and the filmmaker herself in the role of the revolutionary's mother, dressed in an ironic white scientific coat. But if there is a science of revolt, Sarah Madoror will have written, shot, played and some of the greatest pages. We hear more than twice, everywhere behind the scenes of the Musée de l'Homme, the sound of fire. She died in April 2020 as a result of Covid-19. In November 2021, "Sarah Maldoror, Cinéma Tricontinental" presented by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, is a retrospective of her work, her life and her political commitment. The exhibition extends to the Musée de l'Homme, the Museum of the History of Immigration and the Museum of Art and History Paul Éluard in Saint-Denis.