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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

René Depestre, poète haïtien

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

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.