Fogo, L’Île de Feu, Un Carnaval dans le Sahel and A Bissau, le Carnaval are the three Sarah Maldoror short films presented in a special session on April 30th, at Cinemateca Portuguesa, in preview of the filmmaker’s retrospective taking place within this year’s edition of the festival.
With this special exhibition, we celebrate the reopening of movie theatres and mark the week that would have seen the festival start, before its postponement. We will also present the programming of Sarah Maldoror’s retrospective, co-programmed by IndieLisboa and Cinemateca Portuguesa, taking place during the 18th edition of IndieLisboa between August 21st and September 6th.
The three short films exhibited were shot in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, in the transition to the eighties. In and through them, Sarah Maldoror explores the meaning of an African identity, its history and culture through the parties and popular demonstrations, giving particular emphasis to Carnival. As Luís Cabral states in the last of these films, “it was the cultural resistance capacity of our people that gave us the necessary strength to drive political and military resistance”. The essential role of culture is thus revealed through the strength and beauty of the masks and through the music and dance that accompany them, as it will be in her subsequent oeuvre to be seen during the festival.
The session takes place on Friday, April 30th, at 7pm, Sala M. Félix Ribeiro, at Cinemateca Portuguesa. The tickets can be purchased through the Cinemateca ticket office.
SARAH MALDOROR SHORT FILMS
FOGO, L’ÎLE DE FEU
Cape Verde, 1979 – 34 min
UN CARNAVAL DANS LE SAHEL
Cape Verde, 1979 – 28 min
A BISSAU, LE CARNAVAL
Guinea-Bissau, 1980 – 18 min
total projection duration: 80 minutes | subtitled electronically in Portuguese | M/12
