Sarah Maldoror: C’est Pour Vous Que Je Parlerai
Curated by BHMF (Justin Randolph Thompson & Janine Gaëlle Dieudji)
This research based exhibition honors the visionary filmmaker Sarah Maldoror through her filmography and friendship with poet and politician Aimé Césaire. Maldoror, whose work forged a radical cinematic language contributed greatly to the wider currents of Black liberation and poetics.
Developed in collaboration with her daughter Annouchka de Andrade, and drawing on personal archives, the project explores Maldoror’s deep engagement with the legacies of the First Congress of Black Artists and Writers in 1956, with the legacy of Negritude and her enduring commitment to revolutionary storytelling.
Presented by The Recovery Plan as an extension of the Festival dei Popoli’s retrospective dedicated to Sarah Maldoror, the exhibition invites reflection on the archive as a living site of memory and resistance. New texts by Chris Cyrille, Leonardo De Franceschi and François Piron offer critical and poetic responses to Maldoror’s body of work.
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: 04 Nov 2025 - 04 Jan 2026
- Time: 2:00
Location
- Via Santa Reparata, 19R, 50129 Firenze FI
Organizer
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Sarah Maldoror
Sarah Maldoror (1929–2020) was a French director, Pan-African by adoption, revolutionary voice, and the first female filmmaker in African cinema. She chronicled the wars of liberation in the former Portuguese colonies, with a particular focus on the role of women in the struggle. After founding the first theater company of black actors in France, Les Griots, in 1956, she was assistant director to Pontecorvo for The Battle of Algiers in 1966, and then to William Klein for Festival panafricain d'Alger (1969). Her first feature film was also the first ever made by an African female director: Sambizanga (1972). Her other major works include her debut short film Monangambééé (1969), Aimé Césaire, un homme une terre (1976), Aimé Césaire – Le Masque des mots (1987), Portrait de Assia Djebar (1989), and Léon G. Damas (1994).
