Continue your Third Horizon Film Festival weekend at PAMM with a retrospective tribute to the late Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), a pioneering filmmaker whose trailblazing career ranged across the globe, from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean to the wider Americas. Her cinema was characterized by a poetic militancy, in which a lived concern for the liberation struggles taking place throughout the colonial world was met by a belief in the political possibilities of art.
Partnering with PAMM’s Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI), Third Horizon is presenting 10 of Maldoror’s nearly 50 films, including a newly restored Sambizanga (1973), the first fiction feature made by a Black woman, as well as three of Maldoror’s documentaries on Aimé Césaire, and several portraits of Caribbean artists. The films will be introduced by Maldoror’s daughter, Annouchka de Andrade, and are accompanied by a panel discussion featuring Nadege Green, Dr. Andrea Queeley, and Natasha Marin.
Schedule: 11:30am–1pm | Sarah Maldoror: Aimé Césaire Focus 1–2pm | Break 2–3pm | Panel:Film and Panel: The Négritude Conference at 35 3–4pm | Sarah Maldoror: Artist Portraits About Sarah Maldoror Born in France to a Guadeloupean father and a French mother, Maldoror was a pioneering filmmaker whose trailblazing career ranged across the globe, from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean to the wider Americas. Influenced profoundly by the work of the Martiniquan writer and statesman Aimé Césaire, about and with whom she made several films, Maldoror’s cinema was characterized by a poetic militancy, in which a lived concern for the liberation struggles taking place throughout the colonial world was met by a belief in the political possibilities of art. In all, Maldoror made almost 50 films—fiction and documentary, feature-length and short, for cinema and television—and Third Horizon is pleased to be presenting ten of them, including a newly restored Sambizanga (1973), the first fiction feature made by a black woman, as well as three of Maldoror’s documentaries on Aimé Césaire, and several portraits of Caribbean artists. Films: Un dessert pour Constance Aimé Césaire: Le masque des mots Aimé Césaire: Un homme, une terre Leon G. Damas Louis Aragon: Un masque à Paris Monangambeee Rene Depestre Sambizanga Toto Bissainthe Wilfredo Lam Panel: The Négritude Conference at 35 Runtime: 60 min. Panelists: Annouchka de Andrade, Dr. Andrea Queeley, and Natasha Marin Moderator: Nadege Green In 1987, a historic gathering of Black intellectuals convened in Miami under the rubric of négritude, the concept first espoused by the Martiniquan poet and thinker Aimé Césaire. Present at the Négritude Conference was Césaire himself, as well as the filmmaker Sarah Maldoror, whose documentary AiméCésaire: The Mask of Words was filmed at the event. Thirty-five years on, Annouchka de Andrade, the daughter of Sarah Maldoror, who will be in Miami to present a retrospective of her mother’s films at THFF22, joins cultural anthropologist Dr. Andrea Queeley, the award-winning curator and poet Natasha Marin, and Miami-based researcher and community archivist Nadege Green in conversation, looking back at the Négritude Conference and exploring the concept of négritude in and for our times Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020) was born in the south of France to a Guadeloupean father and French mother. In 1956, she co-founded Les Griots, the first Parisian theater company comprised exclusively of Black actors. She later studied filmmaking in Moscow, and then was assistant to Gillo Pontecorvo on his classic of anticolonial cinema, The Battle of Algiers (1966), before starting to direct her own work. In 1973, she made Sambizanga, a denunciation of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, the first fiction feature directed by a Black woman. In all, Maldoror made nearly 50 feature-length and short films. Inspired by the Martiniquan poet and statesman Aimé Césaire, about and with whom she made several films, as well as by the Surrealist movement, Maldoror showed in her considerable body of work an ongoing concern with anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and racism, as well as the work of a diverse number of artists, writers, and musicians. Annouckha de Andrade is artistic director for the Amiens International Film Festival. A screenwriter, producer, and distributor, she has simultaneously earned experience in intercultural dialogue and analysis in cultural fields that has enabled her to work for the French diplomatic service as Cultural Attaché and director of the Institut Français in Seville, Spain, and in Colombia as regional audiovisual attaché for the Andean nations. She promotes her parents’ legacy through the organization The Association of Friends of Sarah Maldoror and Mario de Andrade.
