Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie

The figure of Maldoror is absolutely improbable. A black filmmaker, born to a Guadeloupean father and a mother from Gers, naming herself after the surrealist poet Lautréamont. Initially an actress with ambitions of tragedy, she originated the troupe Les Griots, the first black theatre company in Paris. She then became a filmmaker by undergoing film training in Moscow. A comrade in the struggle of the great figures of anti-colonialism, from Aimée Césaire to Frantz Fanon to Richard Wright, she carries and nurtures her vision in the light of the great currents of the century: surrealism, negritude, pan-Africanism, communism.

She is a political figure like there seem to be fewer and fewer; drawing her strength and revolt from an immense faith in humanity and in necessary solidarity, refusing to give up the fight despite the horrors of colonial regimes and racism. Incessantly participating in the necessity to bear witness, to share, to make the hidden unacceptable visible to others. Sarah Maldoror passed away in 2020 from COVID-19, and her colossal body of work, composed of around forty films, is only just beginning to be the subject of extensive retrospectives (Palais de Tokyo in 2021) and restorations. She will undoubtedly enlighten us in the vicissitudes of the struggles to come.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director