Ouverture du théâtre noir à Paris
Sarah Maldoror
»We are responsible; no one else is to blame. We are the only ones who should communicate our history.« Sarah Maldoror
In this short television feature, Sarah Maldoror documents the opening of the Théâtre Noir de Paris, with which she was closely connected. At the time, the theatre company and cultural institution was France’s first Black cultural centre for performers from Africa and the French Antilles. The theatre offered Black performing artists their own creative space, particularly for Négritude. Maldoror approached Négritude as a poetics of difference. Based on Pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism and the synthesis between Marxism and Surrealism, Négritude is a cultural movement founded by poets Aimé Cesaire, Leopold Senghor and Leon G. Damas, which had a strong influence on Sarah Maldoror’s filmmaking. Alongside interviews with the founders of the Théâtre Noir, Maldoror documents stage performances by Lisete Malidor and Geoffrey Oryema.
Guest: Annouchka de Andrade
Sarah Maldoror
Sarah Maldoror (1929–2020) was a political activist, theatre producer and filmmaker of Caribbean and French descent. In 1956, she founded the Compagnie d’Art Dramatique des Griots in Paris, the first group of African and Afro-Caribbean actors. She attended drama school in Paris and received a scholarship to study film with Mark Donskoi in Moscow in 1961. Maldoror was a pioneer of Pan-African cinema. Her first short film was presented in Cannes in 1971. She supported the liberation movements in Guinea, Algeria and Guinea-Bissau together with her partner Mario Pinto de Andrade. With over forty films to her name, her body of work closely follows the major intellectual and political movements of the 20th century – Négritude, Pan-Africanism, feminism and communism.
Films by Sarah Maldoror
Eia pour Césaire 2009 | L’enfant cinema 1997 | Aimé Césaire, le masque des mots 1986 | Un carnaval dans le Sahel 1979 | Et les chiens se taisaient 1978 | Des fusils pour Banta 1970 | Monamgambée 1968
