Restoring the Past through Militant Filmmaker Sarah Maldoror’s Films – Magazine – Centre Pompidou
A tireless filmmaker, Sarah Maldoror—who died in 2020—ventured across many territories throughout a body of work comprising more than forty films: short and feature-length films, television dramas, reports, and documentaries. Her prolific output reveals her boundless curiosity, the plasticity of her imagination, and the richness of her ideas. Driven by political commitment, a deep belief in education, the power of history, and the necessity of transmission, the filmmaker produced numerous works on the history of Black thought, its heritage, and its heroes.
Driven by political commitment, a deep belief in education, the power of history, and the necessity of transmission, the filmmaker produced numerous works on the history of Black thought, its heritage, and its heroes.
On screen, degraded footage alternates with restored images still in progress—here, highlights lack detail; there, the sound breaks up. A film is reborn before our eyes, and with it, the memory and vision of its director. Two more of her films are being restored at the same facility with the support of MansA – Maison des Mondes Africains: Et les chiens se taisaient (And the Dogs were Silent, 1978) and Aimé Césaire – Le masque des mots (Aimé Césaire – The Mask of Words, 1987), both receiving their world premiere screenings at the Centre Pompidou. At the helm is the filmmaker’s eldest daughter, Annouchka de Andrade, head of the Friends of Sarah Maldoror and Mario de Andrade Association, tirelessly working to highlight her parents’ intellectual legacy. An interview follows
