Sarah Maldoror
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Cinéma 1 | Level 1
April 3 - 7, 2025
Courtesy Annouchka de Andrade et Henda Ducados
Associated programme to the Black Paris exhibition
The "Black Paris" exhibition features the work of artist Sarah Maldoror, including one of her major productions, And the Dogs Were Quiet. Filmed in the collections of the Musée de l’Homme in 1978, this motion picture is built around filmed excerpts of Aimé Césaire’s drama And the Dogs Were Silent. During the exhibition, the Centre Pompidou’s cinemas are paying tribute to this unique filmmaker whose work documents and questions the present more than ever before.
A five-day event that includes screenings (all accompanied by artists and witnesses on whom Sarah Maldoror’s work has had a lasting influence), readings, encounters, and the presentation of previously unseen archives, invites the public to hear the filmmaker’s voice in the present. Restored versions of the films Monangambé (1969, 17 min), And the Dogs Were Quiet (1978, 13 min), Le masque des mots (1987, 47 min) and Regards de mémoire (2003, 24 min) will be presented for the first time in France thanks to the support of MansA – Maison des Mondes Africains. Sarah Maldoror’s 1979 trilogy composed of Carnaval in the Sahel (28 min), Fogo, Fire Island (34 min) and Carnaval in Bissau (18 min) will also be shown.
Filmmaker Sarah Maldoror’s life and career tie in with all currents of activism in the 20th century: surrealism, Négritude, Pan-Africanism, feminism and communism.
Born Marguerite Sarah Ducados in 1929 to a mother from Gers and a Guadeloupean father, she chose the pseudonym Maldoror, inspired by Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror, rediscovered by the Surrealists during the interwar period. In 1956, Sarah Maldoror founded Les Griots, the first Black theater troupe in Paris. She later studied filmmaking in Moscow before directing her first short film, Monangambééé, in 1969. Her first feature film released in theaters, Sambizanga (1972), widely regarded as her masterpiece, was restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation.
Sarah Maldoror passed away in 2020, leaving behind a legacy of over 40 films, including both fiction and documentaries of varying lengths, shot in France, Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Colombia, as well as numerous unrealized projects. Her work, deeply poetic and artistically driven, consistently explored struggles for independence, especially in African nations, alongside her companion, Angolan poet and anti-colonialist activist Mario Pinto de Andrade.
“We will never be free as long as you see us the way you do. We must free you from the idea you have of Black people so that we can be free Black people...” Sarah Maldoror declared to writer Marguerite Duras in a 1958 interview, encapsulating the direction of her life’s work.
She adapted and brought to the screen the portraits of numerous artists and intellectuals of the 20th century, including Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, Caribbean poet René Depestre, Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, French figures Louis Aragon and Robert Doisneau, and Mexican painter Vlady Rusakov. Maldoror also collaborated with filmmakers such as Chris Marker, Gillo Pontecorvo, and William Klein.
As part of ongoing tributes, Sarah Maldoror’s work was featured in the exhibition "After the End: Maps for Another Future" at the Centre Pompidou-Metz from January 2025, and in the "Regards Satellites" festival at the L’Écran cinema in Saint-Denis, from January 29 to February 9, 2025. Carlotta Films released restored editions of Sambizanga, Monangambééé, and the Carnaval trilogy in a special box set in early 2025, accompanied by a dedicated issue of Avant-Scène Cinéma in February focusing on Sambizanga.
In spring 2025, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York hosts a complete retrospective of her films, followed by another in São Paulo in 2026.
CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
