11
MONANGAMBEEE 1968, ALG, 16 min
a film by Sarah Maldoror
A woman visits her husband in prison. When he leaves, he makes a promise to her, but the
guard who watches over them reveals his secrets to the prison director. Due to a language
misunderstanding, the characters are subjected to brutal interrogations and will fight for their
lives. Entitled “Monangambee”, an Angolan cry meaning “white death”, the film illustrates the
fear felt by the communities that Maldoror represents in this short film. The copy on display is a
scan, carried out in 2017 by the Arsenal Institute in Berlin, from the only existing film copy of the
film.
text by Joana Ascensão
“After the anti-colonial struggle, filming a slave quarters is no longer filming the slave quarters itself, but capturing the music of the chains, creating a symphony of chains to represent pain, something more sublime and poetic.”
Monangambeee (1969) is the inaugural film by Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), a filmmaker who thus begins a unique journey in cinema, asserting herself as the first black woman to make a work of fiction about the struggles for liberation in Africa, in this case in Angola. On the other hand, Monangambeee is very likely Maldoror's freest work, as it has the strength and radicalism of many first films, in which the work on cinematographic matter and forms takes on a truly exploratory character. In this short film of about fifteen minutes in length, such freedom is immediately connoted with the free improvisation work carried out by the Art Ensemble of Chicago which, combining jazz with avant-garde music, is mirrored in the extraordinary soundtrack that, invited by the director, the group composed it to accompany the film. In its exacerbated contrasts, the music enhances the freedom of other aspects of the film, at the same time that it distances Monangambeee from the canons of militant cinema, which earned it some criticism.
Based on a short story written a few years earlier by José Luandino Vieira (O Fato Completo de Lucas Matesso, 1962), Monangambeee freely adapts it while revealing the excellent work developed by Maldoror with a group of mostly amateur actors. A linguistic divergence in the interpretation of the term “complete” will be at the origin of the wrong perception of a possible conspiracy, and of the subsequent torture that will be inflicted in prison on the protagonist of the film by the Portuguese political police. Meaning a meal characteristic of the Angolan musseques, it is understood by the jailers as a “complete suit”, piece of clothing in which a secret note would be hidden, which leads to wild interpretations and an exacerbation of the violence that accompanies an interrogation under torture.
In a film that accentuates the distance between the perspective of the colonizers and the colonized, Maldoror's camera always follows very closely the body of Mateus "Lucas Matesso" (admirably represented by Carlos Pestana) and the other prisoners through images dominated by sharp light-dark contrasts, which are echoed in the symbolic soundtrack.
It is thus to the sound of jazz that a magnificently choreographed sequence unfolds in which the protagonist is confronted with an invisible whip, throwing himself against the dungeon wall and dragging his body across the floor, as if to escape the lashes of an unseen torturer, but which will violently tear your body apart. Unique moment, in which the extreme violence of the depicted events finds expression in an original work of composition that, without neglecting the rigor of the representation, points to the profound theatricality of a work closely linked to the dramatic arts and surrealist-inspired poetry.
It is important to remember that Monangambeee is the first work made by the filmmaker who in 1956 adopted the pseudonym Maldoror in homage to the poetry of Lautréamont, in the same year founding Les Griots, the first Parisian “black theater” company, whose debut play was Les Nègres by Jean Genet. In the face of Monangambeee, we think of Genet and his only film, also based on exacerbated contrasts, but also on Maldoror's extreme proximity to so many other writers, such as Mário Pinto de Andrade, her partner and founder of the MPLA, who took her to Angola and the work of Luandino, or Aimé Césaire, whose poetry will be decisive in her cinematographic work.
On the other hand, the photographic images present in the final credits of Monangambeee, in which we see guerrilla men and women carrying weapons on their backs, are by Italian journalist and photographer Augusta Conchiglia. If, given the complicated political situation, Monangambeee had to be filmed in Algeria, and had the support of the liberation movements, these war photographs were taken clandestinely in 1968 in Angola. Images that reveal the importance of the documentary record of an ongoing anti-colonial struggle, while at the same time explaining how Monangambeee participates in a transnational movement in which the various arts play an essential role.
Sambizanga (1973), Maldoror's next feature film, will be based on a second literary work by Luandino Vieira, but also on popular Angolan music connoted with the liberation movements, whose title corresponds precisely to that of Monangambeee. Continuing along the path of a political cinema, in which it sought to undo crystallized cultural configurations in favour of a surrealist-inspired freedom, it is through cinema practiced as a means of investigation poetic that Sarah Maldoror will carry out a continuous work of resistance and cultural affirmation. This is the poetry that Monangambeee reveals to us.
* Sarah Maldoror: o cinema da noite grávida de punhais Interview by Raquel Schefer to Sarah Maldoror, held in 2013 and published in “Angola, O Nascimento de Uma Nação (Vol III) – O Cinema da Independência”, coord. Maria do Carmo Piçarra and Jorge António, War and Peace, Lisbon, 2015.
directing SARAH MALDOROR script SARAH MALDOROR, MARIO DE ANDRADE, SERGE MICHEL original story JOSÉ LUANDINO VIEIRA with CARLOS PESTANA, NOUREDDINE DREIS, MOHAMMED ZINET, ATHMANE SABI, ELISA PESTANA musicART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO direction of photography ABDELKADER ADELphotographs AUGUSTA CONCHIGLIA production DÉPARTAMENT ORIENTATION ET INFORMATION DU FRONT NATIONAL DE LIBÉRATION support L’ARMEE NATIONALE POPULAIRE
“After the anti-colonial struggle, filming a slave quarters is no longer filming the slave quarters itself, but capturing the music of the chains, creating a symphony of chains to represent pain, something more sublime and poetic.”
Sarah Maldoror *
Monangambeee (1969) is the inaugural film by Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), a filmmaker who thus begins a unique journey in cinema, asserting herself as the first black woman to make a work of fiction about the struggles for liberation in Africa, in this case in Angola. On the other hand, Monangambeee is very likely Maldoror's freest work, as it has the strength and radicalism of many first films, in which the work on cinematographic matter and forms takes on a truly exploratory character. In this short film of about fifteen minutes in length, such freedom is immediately connoted with the free improvisation work carried out by the Art Ensemble of Chicago which, combining jazz with avant-garde music, is mirrored in the extraordinary soundtrack that, invited by the director, the group composed it to accompany the film. In its exacerbated contrasts, the music enhances the freedom of other aspects of the film, at the same time that it distances Monangambeee from the canons of militant cinema, which earned it some criticism.
Based on a short story written a few years earlier by José Luandino Vieira (O Fato Completo de Lucas Matesso, 1962), Monangambeee freely adapts it while revealing the excellent work developed by Maldoror with a group of mostly amateur actors. A linguistic divergence in the interpretation of the term “complete” will be at the origin of the wrong perception of a possible conspiracy, and of the subsequent torture that will be inflicted in prison on the protagonist of the film by the Portuguese political police. Meaning a meal characteristic of the Angolan musseques, it is understood by the jailers as a “complete suit”, piece of clothing in which a secret note would be hidden, which leads to wild interpretations and an exacerbation of the violence that accompanies an interrogation under torture.
In a film that accentuates the distance between the perspective of the colonizers and the colonized, Maldoror's camera always follows very closely the body of Mateus "Lucas Matesso" (admirably represented by Carlos Pestana) and the other prisoners through images dominated by sharp light-dark contrasts, which are echoed in the symbolic soundtrack.
It is thus to the sound of jazz that a magnificently choreographed sequence unfolds in which the protagonist is confronted with an invisible whip, throwing himself against the dungeon wall and dragging his body across the floor, as if to escape the lashes of an unseen torturer, but which will violently tear your body apart. Unique moment, in which the extreme violence of the depicted events finds expression in an original work of composition that, without neglecting the rigor of the representation, points to the profound theatricality of a work closely linked to the dramatic arts and surrealist-inspired poetry.
It is important to remember that Monangambeee is the first work made by the filmmaker who in 1956 adopted the pseudonym Maldoror in homage to the poetry of Lautréamont, in the same year founding Les Griots, the first Parisian “black theater” company, whose debut play was Les Nègres by Jean Genet. In the face of Monangambeee, we think of Genet and his only film, also based on exacerbated contrasts, but also on Maldoror's extreme proximity to so many other writers, such as Mário Pinto de Andrade, her partner and founder of the MPLA, who took her to Angola and the work of Luandino, or Aimé Césaire, whose poetry will be decisive in her cinematographic work.
On the other hand, the photographic images present in the final credits of Monangambeee, in which we see guerrilla men and women carrying weapons on their backs, are by Italian journalist and photographer Augusta Conchiglia. If, given the complicated political situation, Monangambeee had to be filmed in Algeria, and had the support of the liberation movements, these war photographs were taken clandestinely in 1968 in Angola. Images that reveal the importance of the documentary record of an ongoing anti-colonial struggle, while at the same time explaining how Monangambeee participates in a transnational movement in which the various arts play an essential role.
Sambizanga (1973), Maldoror's next feature film, will be based on a second literary work by Luandino Vieira, but also on popular Angolan music connoted with the liberation movements, whose title corresponds precisely to that of Monangambeee. Continuing along the path of a political cinema, in which it sought to undo crystallized cultural configurations in favour of a surrealist-inspired freedom, it is through cinema practiced as a means of investigation poetic that Sarah Maldoror will carry out a continuous work of resistance and cultural affirmation. This is the poetry that Monangambeee reveals to us.
* Sarah Maldoror: o cinema da noite grávida de punhais Interview by Raquel Schefer to Sarah Maldoror, held in 2013 and published in “Angola, O Nascimento de Uma Nação (Vol III) – O Cinema da Independência”, coord. Maria do Carmo Piçarra and Jorge António, War and Peace, Lisbon, 2015.
directing SARAH MALDOROR script SARAH MALDOROR, MARIO DE ANDRADE, SERGE MICHEL original story JOSÉ LUANDINO VIEIRA with CARLOS PESTANA, NOUREDDINE DREIS, MOHAMMED ZINET, ATHMANE SABI, ELISA PESTANA musicART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO direction of photography ABDELKADER ADELphotographs AUGUSTA CONCHIGLIA production DÉPARTAMENT ORIENTATION ET INFORMATION DU FRONT NATIONAL DE LIBÉRATION support L’ARMEE NATIONALE POPULAIRE