Sarah Maldoror. An Alternative Identity

The season of films Sarah Maldoror. An Alternative Identity responds to the need to network with the city’s institutions to develop a de-localised programme and the desire to highlight a pioneer of African film like Sarah Maldoror, who left us a wonderful legacy on the subject of negritude. The season sets out to revisit Maldoror’s work, as a figure as yet little-known but essential in dealing with the decolonial movement and struggles for social diversity. The four sessions, designed by the Museu Tàpies with the special support of Annouchka de Andrade, the film-maker’s daughter, will set out from Maldoror’s visual poetics to portray a future society rooted in anticolonialism and pan-Africanism. 

Sarah Maldoror (Condom, France, 1929 – Fontenay-lès-Bris, France, 2020) is considered the first black woman to make a feature-length film in Africa and represents a key figure in world and revolutionary cinema, firmly and unabashedly anti-racist. Over several decades, her prolific body of work includes more than forty films that combine fiction and documentary in the broadest sense of the term. Altogether it is a kind of poetry dedicated to translating the black cultural, social and political movement into images and sound.

The seminar will invite film critics, activists and sociologists to help to construct a fruitful dialogue around concepts like colonialism, social justice and migration, but will also deal with broader terms in connection with possession, baggage, heritage or identity.

Session 1:     Date: 25 September 2024 | Venue: Filmoteca de Catalunya | 6 pm

Presentation of the series Sarah Maldoror: An Alternative Identity with the directors of the Museu Tàpies and the Filmoteca de Catalunya
Opening lecture: Filming Means Taking Sides, by Annouchka de Andrade
Screening of Monangambé (1968, 17 min) and Ana Mercedes Hoyos (2008, 13 min)
Public debate and questions to Annouchka de Andrade

Session 2:     Date: 27 September 2024 | Venue: Filmoteca de Catalunya | 6 pm

Presentation of the session by the Filmoteca de Catalunya
Presentation of the Carnaval trilogy by Annouchka de Andrade
Performative reading by Yazel Parra Nahmens
Screening of the Carnaval trilogy: Un carnaval dans le Sahel, Fogo, île de feu and Carnaval en Guinée-Bissau (1979-1980, 80 min). First screening in Spain of the restored copies.

Session 3:     Date: 1 October 2024 | Venue: Institut Français | 6 pm

Presentation of the series by the Tàpies museum
Preamble: In Search of an Identity, by Annouchka de Andrade
Screening of Aimé Césaire: le masque des mots (1987, 47 min)
Public debate and questions to Annouchka de Andrade

Session 4:     Date: 2 October 2024 | Venue: Museu Tàpies | 5.30 pm

Presentation of the series by the Tàpies museum
Screening of Sambizanga (1972-1973, 102 min)
Round table with Annouchka de Andrade and Daniellis Hernández, moderated by Yazel Parra Nahmens

With the participation and collaboration of the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Institut Français de Barcelone, With the support of the programme Museu Habitat, an initiative by the Generalitat de Catalunya.