The Curators’ Quaderno

the

curators’

quaderno

REVOLUTION

ON FILM

Tribute to Sarah Maldoror

the

curators’

quaderno

REVOLUTION ON FILM

Tribute to Sarah Maldoror

Publication sponsor: Calliope Arts Foundation

Publisher: The Florentine Press

tcq series editor: Linda Falcone

Book design: Marco Badiani

Book layout: Leo Cardini

Consultant: Alberto Lastrucci

colophon

Printer: Cartografica Toscana

2025 B’Gruppo Srl, Prato

First Edition: October 2025

Series: The Curators’ Quaderno

© Calliope Arts Foundation

All rights reserved

Printed in Florence, Italy

The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style

publications, conceived by the Calliope Arts Foundation, in

collaboration with The Florentine Press, to raise awareness of

women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.

2

This issue is published in conjunction with the 66th edition

of the Festival dei Popoli – the Florence-based international

documentary film festival (1 to 9 November 2025) – under the

artistic directorship of Alessandro Stellino and Claudia Maci’s

management (www.festivaldeipopoli.org). The festival’s tribute

to Sarah Maldoror is part of a collaboration between Festival

dei Popoli and Calliope Arts Foundation, within the framework

of ‘Women Trailblazers in Documentary Cinema’, a project

aimed at rediscovering and celebrating female directors,

whose work has been undervalued or forgotten.

Sarah Maldoror and

photography director

Claude Agostini on the set

of Sambizanga, ph. Suzanne

Lipinska, 1972

Next page: Still from

Maldoror’s Sambizanga, 1972

4

“In this edition of The Curators’

Quaderno, portraits of filmmaker

Sarah Maldoror at various stages of

her life are interspersed with stills

representative of her films. These

frames, spliced from reels in need

of restoration or recently restored,

are like tiny fragments of an

expansive vision, that of Maldoror,

as filmmaker, thinker, revolutionary

and mother. Her own words

punctuate many of these stills,

and they ring with a determination

and clarity whose power is honed

and heightened through the lens

of her camera. The filmmaker’s

reflections are presented with the

musings of others – curators and

cinema scholars – who advocate

for her films’ accessibility. They

draw connections between Sarah’s

creative struggles and successes

– some that were specific to her

own multi-cultural background

and others that were universal.

Lastly, but perhaps most important,

are the memories and dreams

of the filmmaker’s daughters,

Annouchka de Andrade and Henda

Ducados, who share the quest to

restore, preserve and share Sarah

Maldoror’s legacy for lovers of

freedom and cinema everywhere.”

Linda Falcone

tcq editor

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On the set of Sambizanga, the

crew climbs aboard a pirogue

to shoot scenes on the river,

ph. Suzanne Lipinska, 1972

HER NAME, HER OUEVRE

“From Algiers to Paris, via

Moscow, Bissau, Conakry,

Bogota, Panama and Martinique,

Sarah Maldoror never stopped

fighting for justice and freedom.

Maldoror’s films discover,

chronicle and celebrate the

stories, myths and traditions

of the African diaspora. In her

cinema, driven by a decolonial,

combative and poetic spirit,

painting and music merge. Born

‘Ducados’ – to a French-born

mother and a father originally

from Guadeloupe – she chose

the name Maldoror in honour

of Lautréamont’s poem, The

Songs of Maldoror, a stance that

reflects her artistic and political

commitment.

In 1956, she co-founded the

first theatre company of black

actors in France, ‘I Griot’. By

1966, she was assistant director

to Pontecorvo for The Battle of

Algiers and then to William Klein in

Festival panafricain d’Alger (1969).

A few years after shooting her

black-and-white short film

Monangambééé (1969) in Algeria,

Sarah Maldoror produced her

masterpiece Sambizanga (1972).

The film tells the story of the

political awakening of an Angolan

woman who takes action after

her husband is arrested, in a love

story that is as individual as it is

collective, in the fight for freedom

of an entire country. It is the first

feature film ever made by an

African director in Africa. Despite

Sambizanga receiving numerous

awards, the director was never

able to garner the funding needed

to produce another feature film.

Following her meeting with Mario

de Andrade, Maldoror expanded

her work to include constant

dialogues with intellectuals,

artists and politicians from

the world of revolutionaries.

In subsequent decades, she

made dozens of films: fiction,

documentaries and countless

shorts for French TV, some in the

form of ‘notes’ and portraits.

Most notable are her several auteur

portraits, such as those dedicated

to Haitian writer René Depestre

(1981), the Haitian singer Toto

Bissainthe (1982), the Martinican

poet and pan-Africanist writer

Aimé Césaire (1977, 1987, 2009), and

the Guyanese poet Léon Gontran

Damas (1995), in the belief that the

French Caribbean is an intellectual

crucible of the modern world.”

Alessandro Stellino

Artistic director,

Festival dei Popoli

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WHERE TO BEGIN

“I have worked in cinema all of my life and that

is why I knew where to start, when it comes to

recovering my mother’s legacy – whether that

means reclaiming rights, finding copies, securing

restoration or re-organising the archives. She

produced 45 films over the course of her life

and, while compiling her archives with my sister

Henda Ducados, we’ve found 50 more, in various

stages of development. Not all of them are ready

to be shot, but in several cases, she’d written the

screenplay, chosen the music, and left notes on

how she envisioned production. Funding was

always a problem; she was a mother, with a family

to feed. She always wanted to make another

feature film after Sambizanga, but she didn’t

have the film in her possession to show potential

funders, and many didn’t believe she could do it.

The film couldn’t be screened outside the United

States for over forty years, because the producer

and distributor who owned the rights refused

to grant us access. It was Martin Scorsese who

intervened in 2016, writing a personal letter to

the licence holder and the fact that the law had

changed by then (there is an obligation to restore

films), so we got access to the negative in 2021,

but Sarah had died in 2020. The restoration was

carried out at the Cineteca di Bologna. Now it can

actually be watched worldwide!”

8

Annouchka de Andrade

Sarah Maldoror’s daughter

Sarah and Henda on the set

of Sambizanga with

Mario de Andrade,


SAMBIZANGA

“What I wanted to show in Sambizanga is the

alone-ness of a woman and the time it takes to

trudge... In this film, I tell the story of a woman.

It could be any woman, in any country, who

takes off to find her husband.”

10

Sarah Maldoror

A MERGING OF THE ARTS

“She was curious and aware of

everything around her. Whenever

she decided to make a movie, she

would start with a painting. This was

important to her. Each movie is related

to a particular painter or a painting.

She would get her cinematographer

to see this particular painting before

the shoot. She didn’t separate art

into different categories. For her,

cinema involved music, art, painting,

sculpture, etc. She wanted to mix

everything together. Whenever she

was in the process of discovering a

new country, the first thing she would

do was to go to a museum to discover

national artists, to feel the art, in order

to feed it into her movies.”



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DEFENDING BEAUTY

Maldoror faced criticism about the beauty

of Sambizanga’s female protagonist, black

actress Elisa Andrade, whom she defended:

“When the heroine of a French or American

film is beautiful, there is no problem, but if the

heroine is African, she cannot be... I found a

woman of great sensitivity and in addition to

this, beautiful. Should I have given up on her

because she was black? Of course not.”

12

Sarah Maldoror

WOMEN ON SCREEN

“I’m only interested in women who

struggle. These are the women I want

to have in my films, not the others. I

also offer work to as many women as

possible during the time I’m shooting

my films. You have to support those

women who want to work with film.”

Sarah Maldoror

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Sarah Maldoror’s

Sambizanga,

filmed in Congo, 1972

14

IN DEFENCE OF HISTORY

“I play a cultural role as filmmaker. What interests

me is to research films about African history,

because our history has been written by others,

not by us. Therefore, if I don’t take an interest in

my own history, then who is going to do it? I think

it is up to us to defend our own history, to make

it known – with all of our qualities and faults, our

hopes and despair. It is our role to do it!”

Sarah Maldoror

DE-COLONISATION THROUGH CULTURE

“Maldoror’s recounting of the struggles for

African independence during the 1960s

and 1970s oppose colonial and patriarchal

perspectives, challenging Western narrative

structures by promoting African languages,

local traditions, and the avant-gardism of

cultural resistance through the use of an

expanded, circular time frame, similar to oral

storytelling. Her militant and poetic cinema

focuses on memory and becomes an instrument

of resistance against assimilation.”

Ludovica Fales

Curator, ‘Tribute to Sarah Maldoror’

66th Festival dei Popoli, Florence

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Monangambééé by Sarah

Maldoror, Algeria, 1969

Abuse by the Portuguese

slave traders in their

colony of Angola are

depicted through the

torture of one prisoner.

A VOICE THROUGH TIME

“The Festival dei Popoli’s ‘Tribute to Sarah Maldoror’

reminds us of the importance of documenting and

preserving the voice of a filmmaker whose courage

and honesty never faltered. Her legacy is more

important now than ever.”

16

Margie MacKinnon

Calliope Arts Foundation, co-founder

A SPACE OF THEIR OWN

“African women must be in the images, behind

the camera, in the editing room and involved in

every stage of the making of a film. They must be

everywhere – they must be the ones to talk about

their problems.”

Sarah Maldoror

A JOURNEY, AN IDENTITY

“From the outset, Sarah Maldoror expressed

herself through a black feminist gaze, which

was completely absent from cinemas of the

time. In a context dominated by men, with

post-colonial France reluctant to accept African

independence, the filmmaker offers a narrative

that focuses on the bodies, social roles, and

contributions of black women to the struggle.

Adept at blending Russian influences, Japanese

cinema and jazz into a personal style, Sarah

Maldoror forcefully asserts her African identity,

enriched by a multicultural experience that led

her to travel between Algeria, Angola, Cape

Verde, and other African countries. Her travels

shaped a rich and unique perspective that is

deeply attentive to the role of women in the

struggle for liberation.”

Ludovica Fales



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Sarah Maldoror at work,

ph. B.J. Nicolaisen, c. 1980s

FOREIGN AND AT HOME

“I feel at home everywhere. I am from

everywhere and nowhere. My ancestors

were slaves. In my case, this makes

things more difficult. The Antilleans

accuse me of not living in the Antilles,

the Africans say that I was not born on

the African continent, and the French

criticise me for not being like them.”

18

Sarah Maldoror

À Bissau, Le Carnaval,

Sarah Maldoror,

Guiné-Bissau, 1980

THE STRENGTH OF RESISTANCE

“For Sarah Maldoror, filming Africa is a unique

and political gesture. Her films reject colonial

exoticism in favour of a style that merges

documentary and fiction, combining poetry and

realism, anthropology and creation. Her antiimperialist

gaze reveals the oppression and

systematic violence of colonialism, but also the

strength of resistance: dance, celebration, and

oral tradition become aesthetic and political

tools. Exile and imprisonment emerge as shared

experiences, always imbued with a vibrant and

indomitable freedom.”

Ludovica Fales



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“I refuse to make a

nice Negro movie.”

Sarah Maldoror

20

Sambizanga was restored by the

African Film Heritage Project, an

initiative developed by The Film

Foundation’s World Cinema Project,

founded by Martin Scorsese, the Pan

African Federation of Filmmakers

and UNESCO, in collaboration with

Cineteca di Bologna.

Stills from Sambizanga,

Sarah Maldoror, 1972

POET AND PIONEER

“She was telling stories Africans would not tell, and that

no one was talking about. I admire her for her sense of

urgency, but also for her poetry, her aesthetic, for the

respect she had for everything she was doing. I don’t like

it when she is referred to solely as a militant filmmaker.

It’s reductive, because there is this idea that militancy

means the film was not well done – that the theme took

precedence above all else. In reality, her films are poetry

– perfectly executed, in terms of the production team,

the photography, the music. She knew that she had a

sort of responsibility and had to make the best film she

could. She knew she was a pioneer.”



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“I am colour of night.”

Sarah Maldoror

22

AUDIENCES AND AFRICA

“I’m no adherent of the concept

of the ‘Third World’. I make

films so that people – no

matter what race or colour

they are – can understand

them. For me, there are only

exploiters and the exploited,

that’s all. To make a film means

to take a position, and when I

take a position, I am educating

people. The audience has a

need to know that there’s a

war going on in Angola, and I

address those among them

who want to know more about

it. In my films, I show them a

people who are busy preparing

themselves for a fight and all

that that entails in Africa: that

continent where everything

is extreme – the distances,

nature, etc. Liberation fighters

are, for example, forced to

wait until the elephants have

passed them by. Only then can

they cross the countryside

and transport their arms and

ammunition. Here, in the West,

the Resistance used to wait

until dark. We wait for the

elephants. You have radios,

information – we have nothing.”

Sarah Maldoror

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24

THROUGH HER LENS

“Sarah Maldoror understood filmmaking

as a tool for social engagement and

political change. Her encounter with

Aimé Césaire at the First Congress

of Black Writers and Artists in 1956

marked the beginning of a shared

vision: art as resistance and cultural

affirmation. Through the series of

works dedicated to Aimé Césaire, she

gives form to his militant poetics; an

aesthetic of critical language rooted

in African and diasporic struggles,

grounded in histories of liberation and

the construction of identity.

Césaire’s vision of Négritude, not as

a philosophy but a sledgehammer,

becomes, through Maldoror’s lens,

a lyrical but incisive instrument,

illuminating the fractures,

contradictions, and dreams of everyday

people navigating postcolonial memory

and historical violence.”

Justin Randolph Thompson

and Janine Gaëlle Dieudji

BHMF, Black History Month Florence

26

Maldoror during the filming

of the lost film Guns for Banta

Guinée Bissau, 1970,

ph. Suzanne Lipinska

FIVE FILMS FOR CÉSAIRE

In Aimé Césaire’s poetry, there is a reference to the

land; just as in Sarah Maldoror’s cinema, there is a

reference to the landscape. This affinity is revealed

in the documentaries and films that Sarah Maldoror

dedicated to Aimé Césaire, poet, philosopher,

and politician from Martinique, one of the most

authoritative voices of the Négritude movement.

In the numerous films dedicated to him, Césaire

appears as a voice that, moving among the shadows,

seeks to capture the drama of a land and the tragedy

of a condition. The strength of Sarah Maldoror’s films

dedicated to Césaire undoubtedly lies in their ability

to bear witness not only to the journey of a body,

but also to that of a land, caught between profound

contradictions.

Still colonized, the Antilles remain - even today - a

scandal that the poet’s voice, despite its power, has

failed to resolve. This is why Sarah Maldoror’s films

are so valuable: despite the current situation, they

bear witness to a land, but also to women and men

who have never stopped resisting. They also make

perceptible the concrete, material link between land,

history, and language, which influence each other

through the voice of the poet.

Chris Cyrille-Isaac

Poet, art critic, and independent exhibition narrator

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UNFINISHED ARCHITECTURES

“Sarah Maldoror’s cinema merges documentary, poetry and fiction

into a cartography of kinship and unrest. In Aimé Césaire, Un

Homme Une Terre, for example, she crafts a political meditation in

movement, centered on Léopold Sédar Senghor’s first state visit to

Martinique. Echoing Césaire’s play The Tragedy of King Christophe,

which punctuates the film, the encounter becomes a stage for

reflecting on memory, power and the unfinished architectures

of independence. Césaire welcomes his old friend through a tale

about Béhanzin, symbol of a conquered Africa, while Senghor

embodies the promise of a fraternal continent. Through sculpted

figures and resonant music like that of Yusef Lateef and Erick

Cosaque, Maldoror maps out an emotional topography where exile,

return and solidarity coalesce across the Black Atlantic.”

28

Justin Randolph Thompson and Janine Gaëlle Dieudji

BHMF, Black History Month Florence

Sarah Maldoror and her daughter

Annouchka de Andrade at ‘Berlinale

Shorts’ 2017, ph. Heinrich Völkel

Previous page: From Aimé Césaire,

Un Homme Une Terre, Martinique, 1976

“I love what is beautiful, I

don’t know why: painting,

sculpture, poetry, everything

interests me. And yes, I like

to film poets.”

Sarah Maldoror

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ON COURAGE AND COWARDICE

“I could add a few words about the making of

Guns for Banta. Maldoror once said that when

it came to making films about the formation

of Guinea-Bissau, she was struck by the fact

that women were active participants in the

struggle and carried guns and heavy loads of

artillery and machinery for the men. A lot of the

disagreements they had towards the end of the

project were due to her focus on this aspect of

the struggle. She highlighted gender imbalance,

but she did it with a lot of beauty. Women were

active soldiers even though they received no

recognition for their service. It’s important to

say, as well, that during this period, Maldoror

said she discovered what human beings really

are, men in particular.

During the course of shooting the film, part of

the team had to return to Algeria because of the

bombings, but Maldoror stayed on with a few

members of the crew. When she came back, she

was furious because she had been abandoned.

I think the General at that time wanted to make

a point, not only because Maldoror had brought

back a project that wasn’t aligned with what had

been agreed, but also because she’d made a

point of telling him what a coward he was! We’re

talking the 1970s, the Algerian army, and the fact

that we were guests of the Algerian government

at the time – these things all contributed to

Maldoror being expelled and to the movie

disappearing.”

30

Henda Ducados


During filming of A Dessert for Constance,

Paris, 1979, ph. Martine Uzan

“When filming, I seek to

leave everyday life behind

and introduce dreams.”

Sarah Maldoror

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While touring Guinea-Bissau for

the film Guns for Banta,


32

“Cinema is an art of the

present. It’s not about

yesterday or tomorrow –

it’s about today!”

Sarah Maldoror

Henda on the set

of And the Dogs

Were Silent

A MOTHER, A

REVOLUTIONARY

“Sarah was modern, ahead

of her time, and she always

treated my sister and me as

individuals. This was heavy

to deal with as a child. Now,

as an adult, I appreciate her

even more. One day, she was

supposed to go to Nigeria for

three days but only returned

three months later. How could

she have imagined that she

was about to land right in

the middle of a coup? Things

were never easy with her,

but they were always fun and

unpredictable – un vrai bordel.

People came in and out of the

house all the time and goodhearted

strangers babysat

us while Sarah travelled

the world. Later on, I was

astonished to learn that so

many major figures of the

1960s had stayed with us

and sat at our kitchen table.

There were very few rules I

can remember her setting,

but one of them was that guns

should be left by the door.”

Henda Ducados


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THE SEARCH FOR SARAH

“When I began this restoration project, my sister Henda Ducados

and I shared the goal of bringing our mother’s work back to life – of

recovering her memory. The first step was to track down the film

prints and reclaim the rights. There were films we had never seen,

or had forgotten. Some were missing altogether. My mother would

sometimes lend master copies to festivals – those reference versions

were then lost.

Today, no trace remains of certain films! We’re still searching. Others

are in very poor condition, either due to technical issues or storage

conditions. All the films shot in the 1970s shifted to red. For now,

we have restored eight films, which is not so bad in three years.

Restoring Sarah Maldoror’s films is a way of reviving her thoughts.”

34



Photo credits

All the photos herein have been

generously provided courtesy of the

Friends of Sarah Maldoror and Mario

de Andrade Association

(www.sarahmaldoror.org).

Front cover: Sarah and Ma tété while

filming Sambizanga, Congo, ph. Suzanne

Lipinska, 1972

P. 3: Sarah Maldoror at the dock,

Congo, ph. Suzanne Lipinska, 1972

Pp. 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,

25: Stills from Maldoror’s Sambizanga, phs.

Suzanne Lipinska, 1972

Pp. 9, 16, 17, 19, 26, 28 (All rights reserved),

33 (All rights reserved): Stills pictured are

courtesy of Annouchka de Andrade and

Henda Ducados

P. 34: A Bissau, Le Carnaval, courtesy of

Annouchka de Andrade and Henda Ducados

Back cover: Still from Maldoror’s

Sambizanga, featuring actress Elisa

Andrade, ph. Suzanne Lipinska, 1972

For references to other photos,

please see captions.

Acknowledgements

Many people and organisations made

this edition of The Curators’ Quaderno

possible. Firstly, we acknowledge Sarah

Maldoror, in gratitude for her outstanding

legacy. Heartfelt thanks go to the Festival

dei Popoli, its president Roberto Ferrari,

artistic director Alessandro Stellino,

manager Claudia Maci, and editorial

consultant Alberto Lastrucci, with special

thanks to Calliope Arts Foundation and its

co-founders, donors Margie MacKinnon

and Wayne McArdle, for their support

of ‘Women Trailblazers in Documentary

Cinema’ and The Curators’ Quaderno.

We’d also like to extend our thanks to

Annouchka de Andrade, Henda Ducados

and the Friends of Sarah Maldoror

and Mario de Andrade Association

for providing invaluable insight and

knowledge in support of this publication,

in addition to its many evocative images.

Thanks to all of this edition’s writers and

curators, featured herein: Linda Falcone,

Ludovica Fales, Chris Cyrille-Isaac, Justin

Randolf Thompson and Janine Gaëlle

Dieudji (BHMF, Black History Month

Florence). Thanks to The Florentine Press

and those responsible for producing and

promoting this publication, including

Marco Badiani, Leo Cardini, Giovanni

Giusti, Deborah Bettazzi, Giacomo Badiani

and Helen Farrell.

The Curators’ Quaderno - Tribute to Sarah Maldoror

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