Sarah Maldoror

Sarah Maldoror (19 July 1929 − 13 April 2020) was a French filmmaker of European and Guadeloupean descent. She is best known for her feature film Sambizanga on the 1961–1974 war in Angola.

In 1958 Maldoror persuaded Jean Genet to give Les Griots first rights to perform his new play, Les Negres, to be directed Roger Blin, actor and theater director. Her coup captured the attention of intellectuals and artists. When the production opened in 1959, Le Monde described it as an "exciting work of the season."

Film career After her studies, Maldoror with Andrade and their daughter lived in Morocco for a period, where their second daughter Henda was born in 1964.

In 1964, the family went to Algiers, described as the "new anti-imperialist metropole of the Third World" since Algeria's independence in 1962. She also worked as an assistant to Algerian director Ahmed Lallem on his film Elles (1966), a documentary about young Algerian women and their views of the future. She was a go-between the male directors and women subjects they wanted to film in this traditional society. These were her first projects in film. The film was selected to represent Angola for the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971.

Reception The Guardian film writer Mark Cousins included Sambizanga in a 2012 list of the ten best African films, saying it was "as bold, as well-lit as Caravaggio paintings".

Maldoror is one of the first women to direct a feature film in Africa. Her subjects were women at the time of the independence movements, and her work is often included in studies of the role of African women in African cinema.

She returned to France, completing numerous commercial as well as personal projects and films. Many of her early films have been lost.

Maldoror died on 13 April 2020, at the age of 90, from COVID-19 complications during the COVID-19 pandemic in France.

Awards A Tanit d'or at the 1972 Carthage Film Festival Maldoror received the National Order of Merit (France) in 2011 from the Government of France

Legacy Sambizanga (1972), considered her masterpiece, is included in the Criterion Collection, with two accompanying commentaries, including a short one by American director Martin Scorsese. Together with Monangambé (1968) and L'hôpital de Leningrad/The Leningrad Hospital (1982), Sambizanga was featured in an evening of screenings by the London Review of Books at The Garden Cinema, on 8 June 2024, in London. L'hôpital de Leningrad, (1982) commissioned by France 2TV, set in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; based on a story by Victor Serge

Filmography 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, 1981 Le cimetière du Père Lachaise Miro Lauren Robert Lapoujade, peintre Toto Bissainthe, Chanteuse René Depestre, poète L'hôpital de Leningrad, (1982) commissioned by France 2TV, set in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; based on a story by Victor Serge La littérature tunisienne de la Bibliothèque nationale Un sénégalias en Normandie Robert Doisneau, photographe Le racisme au quotidien (Everyday racism), 1983 Le passager du Tassili (The Tassili passenger), 1987 Aimé Césaire, le masque des mots (Aimé Césaire, the mask of words), 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 Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l’utopie by Anne Laure Folly, France /Togo, 1998.