Sambizanga
Sun 26 OctProduced by the anti-colonial political movement, Movimento Popular de Libertaҫão de Angola (MPLA), Sambizanga is about the struggle for Angolan liberation from Portuguese colonial forces. The film follows Maria and her newborn baby who travel by foot to Angola’s capital city, Luanda, where her husband has been arrested by Portuguese authorities as an MPLA political militant. Explicitly political, Sambizanga is also a radiantly beautiful film, shot on 35mm and lit with golden light, as Maldoror turns dismal spaces into seemingly Renaissance paintings.
Maldoror, a Guadeloupean-French filmmaker who cowrote the screenplay with her husband, Mário Pinto de Andrade, a prominent leader of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, said of the film, “What I wanted to show in Sambizanga is the aloneness of a woman and the time it takes to march….”.
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Image Retrouvée (Paris) from the 35mm original negatives, in association with Éditions René Chateau and the family of Sarah Maldoror. Funding provided by Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore and disseminate African cinema.
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