
Sarah Maldoror
Biography
Sarah Maldoror (in Arabic: سارة مالدورور), whose real name was Marguerite Sarah Ducados, was a French filmmaker and director, born on July 19, 1929 in Condom (Gers) and died on April 13, 2020 in Fontenay-lès-Briis (Essonne). Her cinema is poetic but also political and committed. She is considered a leading figure in African cinema and the first female director on the continent.
Born to a Guadeloupean father from Marie-Galante and a mother from Gers, she chose the artist name "Maldoror" in homage to the poet Lautréamont. In 1958, she created the first black troupe in Paris, "Les Griots", alongside Toto Bissainthe, Timoti Bassori and Samb Abambacar. One of their goals is to share and make known the texts of black authors, and to offer major roles to actors of African origin. Sarah Maldoror left for two years in Moscow to study cinema at VGIK under the guidance of Mark Donskoï. There she met the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène.
Companion of Mário Pinto de Andrade, Angolan poet and politician, she participated with him in the African liberation struggles. They gave birth to two daughters, Annouchka de Andrade and Henda Ducados. She returned to France in Saint-Denis. Mario de Andrade is the founder and first president of the MPLA (Movement for the Liberation of Angola). While he was secretary to Alioune Diop, founder of Présence africaine, he organized the first congress of black writers and artists in Paris (Sorbonne, 1958) and became a close friend of the poets Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Frantz Fanon and Richard Wright.
It was in Algiers, where she moved in 1966, that she made her debut on the cinematographic front of the anti-colonial struggles: assistant on Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers (1966) and William Klein's Pan-African Festival of Algiers 1969, a documentary, she soon 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 partner Pinto de Andrade with the French writer Maurice Pons, Sambizanga takes place in 1961 and describes the repression of the Angolan Liberation Movement from the point of view of Maria, the wife of a revolutionary activist imprisoned and tortured by the Portuguese army, who sets out to look for him across the country.
Sarah Maldoror will direct more than forty short or feature-length films, fiction films or documentaries. Her gaze has focused in particular on the poets Aimé Césaire (five films), René Depestre or Louis Aragon, as well as the painters Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Joan Miró or Vlady.
She died in April 2020 from Covid-19. In November 2021, "Sarah Maldoror, Cinéma Tricontinental" proposed by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, is a retrospective of her work, her life and her political commitment. The exhibition continues at the Musée de l'Homme, the Musée de l'Histoire de l'immigration and the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire Paul Éluard in Saint-Denis.
Acting (7 movies)
Directing (47 movies)

Papa Césaire
2009
Tribu du bois de l'E
1998

Memory's Gaze
2003

Carnival in the Sahel
1979

Sambizanga
1973

Guns for Banta
1970

Portrait of an African Woman
1985

Monangambeee
1968

Dessert for Constance
1981

Rencontre avec Assia Djebar
1987

And the Dogs Were Silent
1976

Léon G. Damas
1995

Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre
1976

Toto Bissainthe
1984

Miró, The Painter
1979

Scala Milan AC
2005

Le Passager du Tassili
1987

Aimé Césaire: The Mask of Words
1987

Aimé Césaire at the End of Daybreak
1977
Carnival in Bissau
1980

Fogo, Fire Island
1979

Louis Aragon, a mask in Paris
1978

Ana Mercedes Hoyos
2009

Les oiseaux mains
2005

The Hospital of Leningrad
1983

Vlady
1989

The Basilica of Saint-Denis
1977

Père Lachaise Cemetery
1978

L'Enfant cinéma
1996

Saint-Denis-sur-Avenir
1972

Wifredo Lam
1980

René Depestre, poète haïtien
1982

Portrait of Christiane Diop
1985

Point Virgule
1986

Wielopole, Wielopole as Staged by Kantor
1980

Opening of the Theater Noir in Paris
1980

First International Conference for Black Women
1986

Claudel in Reims
1984

A Senegalese Man in Normandy
1986

Emanuel Ungaro
1986

Alberto Carlisky
1986

Foreign-Inspired Architecture in Paris
1979

Tunisian Literature at the French National Library
1986

Robert Doisneau, photographe
1987

Public Writer
1985

Robert Lapoujade, peintre
1984

Point Virgule, Youth Journal
1986
| Title | Year | Job | 
|---|---|---|
| Monangambeee | 1968 | Writer | 
| Saint-Denis-sur-Avenir | 1972 | Writer | 
| Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre | 1976 | Writer | 
| The Basilica of Saint-Denis | 1977 | Writer | 
| Père Lachaise Cemetery | 1978 | Writer | 
| Wifredo Lam | 1980 | Writer | 
| The Hospital of Leningrad | 1983 | Writer | 
| L'Enfant cinéma | 1996 | Writer | 
| Papa Césaire | 2009 | Writer | 




