Movie

Monangambeee (1968)

• January 1, 1968
• 18m

• Drama

Overview

Filmmaker-griot coming from the theater, it was with a camera, while the war in Vietnam occupied everyone's minds, that Sarah Maldoror gave visibility to the African wars of decolonization: Angola, Guinea Bissau, French Guinea, Cape Verde... Her short film Monangambée addresses the torture by the Portuguese army of a sympathizer of the Angolan resistance. At the end of editing, Sarah Maldoror approached the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago during a Parisian concert and offered to add sound to her film. The next day they watched the film, were convinced and recorded their first soundtrack for free as evidence of African-American solidarity. Shot in Algiers, Monangambée is a film about torture and, more broadly, about the incomprehension between the colonized and the colonizers. It is based on a novel by the Angolan writer Luandino Vieira, then imprisoned by the Portuguese colonial power.

Director

Sarah Maldoror

Writers

Mário Pinto de Andrade, Sarah Maldoror, Luandino Vieira, Serge Michel

Starring

Elisa Andrade, Carlos Pestana, Mohamed Zinet