Resistance and political awareness through the poetic gaze of Sarah Maldoror

This chapter contributes to critical thinking on the emergence of cinema in Portuguese-speaking African countries. It analyses the history of a unique director, Sarah Maldoror, and her work spanning from Europe to Africa – particularly Morocco, Algeria, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde – and it details her special approach to political cinema of the internationalist movement. Maldoror gained renown for rejecting more traditional documentary approaches and the direct cinema technique typical of this film movement in favour of a signature poetic, aesthetic gaze. Maldoror's refusal to have her freedom of expression limited resulted in the seizure of the film's reels, which disappeared. Maldoror sets up a dialogue between political engagement and art, imagining it through the words of Luandino and using jazz music as the cry for freedom.