Sarah Maldoror
 |
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| Sarah Maldoror | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sarah Ducados 1938 Gers, France |
| Occupation | Film director |
Sarah Maldoror (born 1938) is a French filmmaker of African descent.
Contents
Early life and education[edit]
Born Sarah Ducados in 1938 in Gers, the daughter of immigrants from Guadaloupe, she chose her artist's name in remembrance of Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont.
She attended a drama school in Paris. Together with her husband, Angolan nationalist Mário Pinto de Andrade, she received a scholarship and studied film with Mark Donskoi in Moscow in 1961-62 where she met Ousmane Sembène.[1] She is best known for her feature film Sambizanga (1972) on the 1961-1974 war in Angola.[2]
Career[edit]
After her studies, Sarah Maldoror, worked as an assistant on Gillo Pontecorvo's acclaimed film, The Battle of Algiers (1966).[3] She also worked as an assistant to Algerian director Ahmed Lallem.
Maldoror's short film, Monangambee (1968), was set in Angola, based on a story by Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira. This 17-minute-long film's title, Monangambée, refers to the call used by Angolan anti-colonial activists to signal a village meeting. The film was shot with amateur actors in Algeria. It tells the story of a poor woman who visits her husband, who is imprisoned in the city of Luanda.[4] The film was selected for the Director's Fortnight at Cannes in 1971, representing Angola.[5][not in citation given]
Her first feature film, Sambizanga, was also based on a story by Vieira.
Maldoror is one of the first women to direct a feature film in Africa; therefore, her work is often included in studies of the role of African women in African cinema.
Awards[edit]
- Maldoror won a Tanit d'or at the 1972 Carthage Film Festival
- Maldoror received the National Order of Merit (France) from the Government of France[6]
Filmography[edit]
- Monangambé, 1968
- Des fusils pour Banta (Guns for Banta), 1970
- Carnaval en Guinée-Bissau (Carnival in Guinea-Bissau), 1971
- Sambizanga, 1972
- Un carneval dans le Sahel (Carnival in Sahel), 1977
- Folgo, Ile de Feu
- Et les chiens se taisaient (And the dogs kept silent)
- Un homme, une terre (A man, a country)
- La Basilique de Saint-Denis
- Un dessert pour Constance, 1983
- Le cimetière du Père Lachaise
- Miro
- Lauren
- Robert Lapoujade, peintre
- Toto Bissainthe, Chanteuse
- René Depestre, poète
- L'hôpital de Leningrad, 1983
- La littérature tunisienne de la Bibliothèque nationale
- Un sénégalias en Normandie
- Robert Doisneau, photographe
- Le racisme au quotidien (Daily life racism), 1983
- Le passager du Tassili (The Tassili passenger), 1987
- Aimé Césaire, le masque des mots (Aimé Césaire, word as masks), 1986
- Emmanuel Ungaro, couturier
- Louis Aragon - Un masque à Paris
- Vlady, peintre
- Léon G. Damas, 1995
- L'enfant-cinéma, 1997
- La tribu du bois de l'é (In the time of people)
Documentary about Sarah Maldoror[edit]
- Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l’utopie by Anne Laure Folly, France /Togo, 1998.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "Sarah Maldoror, Guadeloupe, France", translation of interview at 15th edition of FESPACO, February 1997, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television, Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000.
- ^ "Angola: Brutality Betrayal". Village Voice. 6 December 1973. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ Sayre, Nora (November 22, 1973). "Movie Review - Sambizanga (1973)". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
- ^ Dembrow, Michael. "Sambizanga and Sarah Maldoror". Archived from the original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ^ "Sambizanga Review". MUBI. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ^ "Remise de l'ordre national du mérite à Sarah Maldoror par Frédéric Mitterand". Retrieved 22 August 2012.
