Birthday:
Birthday:

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.
Birthday: July 19, 1929
Death: April 13, 2020

November 19, 2009

January 01, 1998

January 01, 2003

January 01, 1979

April 26, 1973

January 01, 1970

January 01, 1985

May 02, 1976

January 01, 1968

March 12, 1981

March 29, 1987

September 08, 1966

January 01, 1969

April 27, 1976

April 27, 1966

May 02, 1995

May 15, 1984

January 14, 2005

July 10, 1979

August 05, 1987

January 01, 1987

January 01, 1977

January 01, 1978

January 01, 1980

January 01, 1979

January 01, 2005

January 01, 2009

May 28, 1983

January 01, 1989

January 01, 1977

January 01, 1978

January 01, 1996

June 01, 1972

January 01, 1980

January 01, 1981

December 15, 1985

May 04, 1986

October 08, 1980

January 01, 1980

November 16, 1986

November 26, 1984

October 05, 1986

January 01, 1982

January 01, 1986

January 01, 1979

June 01, 1986

October 17, 1987

January 01, 1985

January 01, 1984

January 01, 1986

January 01, 1999

December 26, 1976

January 16, 2002

July 20, 2005

January 01, 2011
![Afrique[s], une autre histoire du XXème siècle - Acte 1](/fallback.png)
December 18, 2010