Toto Bissainthe

French of Antillean origin, Sarah Maldoror's work is a kind of poetry dedicated to translating the cultural, social and political movement of Négritude into sound and image. A new visual and narrative syntax for a different identity. She started out in theater -Les Griots, the first all-black drama theater company-, after which she studied film in Moscow and then joined the international decolonization movements. As part of these, her work would be on par with the work of theoretical essayists like Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, and would be among the most resounding film manifestations of the global south. After this guerrilla stage, Maldoror would take on issues of black identity through the cultural, political and social movement of négritude, founded by the poets Aimé Césaire, Leopold Senghor and Léon Damas. She would come to think of her filmmaking as a way of translating the poetic word of these writers into images. Her work includes fiction film, documentary film in a broad sense (reportage, portraits, landscapes) and theater.