23 MAY — 02 JUNE 2024

23 MAY — 02 JUNE 2024

Sambizanga

Sarah Maldoror

France / Angola

Fiction, 1973, 102'

We are in 1961, at the beginning of the war for Angolan independence. Domingos Xavier is a revolutionary arrested by the Portuguese military and taken to a prison in Sambizanga. His wife, Maria, seeks him out, fearing he may have been subjected to torture, or even death. A film that shows the liberation of Angola through the eyes of a woman.

Retrospective

INFO

ORIGINAL TITLE

Sambizanga

LANGUAGE

Portuguese (PT) / Lingala

SCRIPT

Sarah Maldoror

CAST

Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M'Vondo, Benoît Moutsila, Lopes Rodrigues, Henriette Meya

PHOTOGRAPHY

Claude Agostini

EDITING

Sarah Maldoror

PRODUCTION

Isabelle Films

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SAME SECTION MOVIES

“Point Virgule”

Point Virgule is a newspaper for young people and it’s made by young people. In this piece, they talk about the edition and its sections and texts, including articles on racism.

Documentary, 1986, 4'

“Wielopole” Mise en scène du polonais Kantor

Polish director Tadeusz Kantor and the theater company Cricot 2 take the play Wielopole, Wielopole to the stage at the Théàtre des Bouffes du Nord, in Paris. In the play, the stages of Christ’s passion merge with a military nightmare.

Documentary, 1980, 3'

A dessert for Constance

A film that uses comedy as a way to combat racist stereotypes and outdated nationalist ideas, such as the concept of culinary prowess, through a look at the daily lives of African migrants in Paris.

Fiction, 1980, 61'

Abbaye Royale de St. Denis

A short film about all facets of the Parisian Gothic basilica, which features both a cathedral and a necropolis, the latter containing tombs of French kings, from the 10th to the 19th century.

Documentary, 1977, 7'

Aimé Césaire, Le masque des mots

The director returns to the figure of Aimé Césaire more than ten years after Aimé Césaire — Un homme, une terre. The occasion is a tribute paid to the surrealist poet and activist of the black movement in Miami. In an interview, he recalls his life’s trajectory.

Martinique / USA

Documentary, 1987, 47'

Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre

Aimé Césaire was a surrealist, essayist, activist and one of the founders of the négritude movement, a progressive artistic and political current that defended black culture, strongly tied to marxist and anti-colonial ideals.

Documentary, 1976, 57'

Alberto Carlisky

Portrait of Argentine sculptor Alberto Carlisky who, after a militant and journalistic life in Buenos Aires, goes to work in Paris with Ossip Zadkine, a cubist sculptor naturalized in France. Carlisky then develops work in his own name.

Documentary, 1980, 4'

Ana Mercedes Hoyos

Metal fruit bowls and paintings representing the banana. Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos talks about her influences in a documentary that does not forget issues such as slavery and Afro-Caribbean cultures.

France / Colombia

Documentary, 2008, 13'

And the Dogs Were Quiet

Theater play whose narrative focuses on a rebellion of a man against the enslavement of his people, filmed inside the Musée de l’Homme, in Paris. With performances by Gabriel Glissant and Sarah Maldoror.

Sarah Maldoror, Bernard Favre, Vincent Blanchet

Documentary, 1978, 13'

Assia Djebar

Interview with Algerian author Assia Djebar about her novel Ombre Sultane. Djebar discusses the role of women in the Arab and Muslim world, and her desire for Western or European readers to see themselves in the book’s protagonists.

Documentary, 1987, 7'

Carnival in Bissau

A documentary short that focuses on how the inhabitants of Guinea-Bissau view their black identity and culture, with the annual Carnival celebration as a backdrop.

Documentary, 1980, 18'

Carnival in the Sahel

Carnival is an event and a festivity where the limits can be transgressed in a context brimming with music, sensations and textures. In this film, it is also a starting point for an approach on the history of black culture and colonialism, with concepts of identity and blackness taking center stage.

Documentary, 1979, 28'

Christiane Diop

Sarah Maldoror reports on Christiane Diop, editor of the publishing house Présence africaine, which includes an interview with illustrator Sophie Mondesir, about her work as the first black woman to run a major publishing house in Paris.

Documentary, 1985, 6'

Claudel à Reims

Presentation and representation of The Hostage, a play by French author Paul Claudel at the Théâtre de la Comédie.

Documentary, 1984, 5'

Eia pour Césaire

After the death of the poet and activist Aimé Césaire, friend and subject of many of her films, Sarah Maldoror revisits points of the globe where he traveled to. The film includes interviews with family members and excerpts from her films with and about the poet.

Martinique / France

Documentary, 2009, 58'

Emanuel Ungaro

A look at the stylist Emanuel Ungaro. For him, it all started with the touch, with the sensual rapport that is established with the fabrics of his clothes. For him, fashion is sensuality.

Documentary, 1982, 4'

Fogo, Fire Island

Ilha do Fogo, in Cape Verde, is the setting for this documentary from the 70s produced by the revolutionary government of the new country, and in which the director chose an anthropological approach. The film looks beautifully at a country in the beginning of its independence.

Documentary, 1979, 34'

Foreword to Guns for Banta

An elegy for Sarah Maldoror’s lost film, Guns for Banta, from 1970. This accompanied a woman involved in the struggle for the independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. Financed by the Algerian army, the aim was to use it as propaganda, having been confiscated from Maldoror.

Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnec

Documentary, 2011, 28'

L’ architecture d’inspiration étrangère à Paris

A city has its character, provided by its architecture. But it’s one that is diverse and made up of buildings of foreign inspiration. These are the corners of Paris that we visit here.

Documentary, 1979, 3'

L’ enfant cinéma

Film dedicated to Toto Bissainthe, the Haitian singer that Sarah Maldoror also filmed at an earlier stage. Here, the magic of cinema is summoned and the cinema of the Lumière brothers and other figures that marked the seventh art is revisited. With the participation of French actor Luc Saint-Eloy.

Documentary, 1996, 23'

L’ Hôpital de Léningrad

A story of political imprisonment set in a mental hospital where the Stalin state police placed whoever their opponents were. The narrative is true to the original text, a short story by the Russian writer Victor Serge. In this film, Maldoror directs Roger Blin, Rüdiger Vogler and Anne Wiazemsky. The jazz soundtrack is by Jean-Yves Bosseur and Jean-Louis Chautemps.

Fiction, 1982, 59'

La littérature tunisienne à la Bibliothèque Nationale

The French national library presents itself, nevertheless, as a library of the whole world, due to its accumulated literary wealth. Piece about the Tunis-Paris Exhibition: Espaces et temps privilégiés — La production intellectuelle tunisienne d’expression française, in 1986.

Documentary, 1986, 3'

La tribu du bois de l’É

Sarah Maldoror travels to Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that is also a region of France. On the island, she visits the Village Titan, in the city of Le Port, a cultural center where you can learn singing, music, painting, dancing, circus, as well as visual and performing arts.

Documentary, 1997, 12'

Le cimetière du Père Lachaise

Sarah Maldoror’s camera roams the famous flagstones and foliage of Père Lachaise, visiting its nooks and cats, to the sound of poems such as Liberté, by Paul Éluard.

Documentary, 1978, 7'

Le passager du Tassili

A telefilm that faithfully adapts Akli Tadjer’s novel, Les A.N.I du Tassili — “unidentified Algerians”, indicates, the acronym. Like the book, the film follows an Algerian who grew up in France, but will visit the birthplace. He eventually returns, along with the ANI returning from their vacations to go back to the Parisian banlieues, happy to be there.

France / Algeria

Fiction, 1986, 88'

Louis Aragon, a Mask in Paris

In this documentary, Sarah Maldoror interviews Louis Aragon, a poet and a key figure in French surrealism. At the same time, she questions how the surrealist movement – in the periods between and post-war – faced the racial issue, the “other” and the affirmation of other identities.

Documentary, 1978, 20'

Léon G. Damas

A documentary about Léon G. Damas, who, like Aimé Césaire, was a poet of the cultural movement of négritude. According to Senegalese colleague Leopold Sédar Senghor, he was the first to “live négritude”.

Documentary, 1994, 25'

L’ Héritage de la chouette, Épisode 7: Logomachie ou les mots de la tribu

The seventh of thirteen half hours that make up an encyclopedic project on the legacy of ancient Greece in the world. This episode is dedicated to logos, logomania, and the universe of dialectics.

Documentary, 1989, 26'

Miró

The Maeght Foundation, a museum of modern art in the south of France, dedicates an exhibition to Joan Miró. Maldoror directed a short piece on the surrealist painter’s oeuvre and exhibition.

Documentary, 1979, 5'

Monangambée

With a jazz soundtrack from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this film denounces the crimes committed by the Portuguese in Angola. Here, we see the torture of a prisoner that results from the colonizar’s ignorance. A song whose meaning is “White Death”, Monangambée is a rallying cry against the colonial abuses in Angola.

Fiction, 1969, 17'

Ouverture du Théâtre noir à Paris

The opening of the Théâtre Noir de Paris, a theater company and cultural association created with the objective of providing a place of creation and a space of representation for theater that heralds from Africa (specifically connected to négritude) and the French Antilles.

Documentary, 1980, 6'

Portrait d’une femme africaine

After an interview whose theme is Senegalese immigrants in France, a piece by Sarah Maldoror appears. This is about the role of African women in social organization, founded on ideals of community solidarity.

Documentary, 1985, 6'

Première Rencontre internationale des femmes noires

Report on RIFEN, the first international meeting of black women. The focus is on the similarities between black women, and not just African ones, and in the phenomenon of transplantation.

Documentary, 1986, 2'

Regards de mémoire

Documentary with the poets Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, which also includes interviews with the writer Roland Suvélor and the politician Madeleine de Grandmaison. Greg Germain, actor and director, reads poems.

Martinique / Haiti

Documentary, 2003, 24'

René Depestre, poète haïtien

Short documentary about René Depestre, poet and former communist activist, one of the most important figures in Haitian literature.

Documentary, 1981, 5'

Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l’utopie

Sarah Maldoror’s work is politicized and permeated by the struggle for freedom and the affirmation of Blackness. The film uses testimonials from Greg Germain, Maurice Pons, Suzanne Lipinska and the director herself, outlining her life and her activism.

Anne-Laure Folly

Documentary, 1998, 26'

Scala Milan A.C.

A journey from the Parisian outskirts to the Scala operatic theater in Milan. A film that takes a rap by Archie Shepp (American jazz saxophonist and playwright) to build a melodious reflection on social inclusion in the suburbs of Paris.

Fiction, 2003, 17'

The Bird Hands

An animation film by Sarah Maldoror for the non-profit organization Secours Populaire Français, dedicated to fighting poverty and discrimination.

Animation, 2005, 1'

The Pan-African Festival of Algiers

The 1st Panafricano Cultural Festival held in Algeria, in 1969, is shown to us by the artist William Klein who observes the preparations and the feeling of joy of the revolutionary movements fighting for the freedom of African nations. The images of the heat of the moment are interspersed with archival images and interviews with writers and activists.

Algeria / France / Germany

Documentary, 1969, 112'

The Women

Four years after Algeria’s independence, Ahmed Lallem provides a stage for high school girls, from the first to the last year, to talk about their lives and the future of their country. Sarah Maldoror is an assistant director for this film.

Algeria / France

Documentary, 1966, 22'

Toto Bissainthe

A portrait of Haitian singer Toto Bissainthe, whose musical journey is marked by her desire todisseminate creole singing.

Documentary, 1984, 4'

Un sénégalais en Normandie

A film that presents the testimonies of Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor’s neighbors, intertwined with his poems and Senghor’s conversations about his life and career.

Documentary, 1986, 13'

Vlady

1983 in Mexico. Russian painter Vlady Kibalchich Rusakov, a refugee in the country, finishes an 8-year long work: painting the frescoes in the chapel of San Felipe Neri, which was transformed into the Miguel Lerdo Library by the Mexican State.

France / Mexico

Documentary, 1989, 24'

Wifredo Lam

Wifredo Oscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla is Wifredo Lam, a Cuban painter and sculptor who made a career in Europe. When he moved to France in 1938, he was supported by Picasso. Throughout his career, he sought to disseminate the Afro-Cuban spirit and culture.

Documentary, 1980, 4'

Écrivain public

Interview with women of different nationalities who are “public” writers. They link French administrative bodies to people who cannot speak and/or write French.

Documentary, 1985, 3'