SAVVY Contemporary - Weekly film series
Session N°46: SAMBIZANGA with Prof. Dr. Barbara Gronau and Dr. Maja Figge

Thursday, January 18th, 2018 - 7PM
please note that the film series will take place on a Thursday this week

SAVVY Contemporary
Plantagenstraße 31
13347 Berlin

Free entry 

For the 46th session of the series how does the world breathe now?, SAVVY Contemporary hosts Prof. Dr. Barbara Gronau and Dr. Maja Figge who will screen Sambizanga from Sarah Maldoror.

Sarah Maldoror. 1972. 35mm. 102 minutes. Film will be screened in 16mm format.

The happy family life of Maria and Domingos (Elisa Andrade and Domingos Oliviera), a young black African couple in Portuguese-occupied Angola, is shattered when repressive colonial authorities hustle Domingos into jail, leaving Maria to tirelessly search for him across Luanda. Set shortly before the 1961 uprising and made with a cast of veteran anti-colonial activists, Maldoror’s deft, bracing film distills decades of incomprehensible suffering into one human-sized story.

Prof. Dr. Barbara Gronau and Dr. Maja Figge explain the choice as follows: 

Sarah Maldoror made her film, beautifully shot in 35mm, to raise consciousness about and solidarity with the forgotten wars of independence in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau for European and US audiences. Instead of focusing on the war, she presents the momentum that ignites the uprising in 1961 and even more – this motivates our choice – the film shows “Le temps que l'on met a marcher” (Sarah Maldoror) from a female perspective.

Sambizanga is shown courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. SAVVY Contemporary thanks the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg "Das Wissen der Künste" at the Universität der Künste for the support of this of this event, and Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art for their support with the projector and projection. Much thanks also to Juana Awad, Anselm Heller, Elena Rossi-Snook, Markus Ruff and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus. A warm gratitude to Sarah Maldoror and Annouchka De Andrade for granting the permission to show this film.

how does the world breathe now? invites artists, curators, and thinkers of all walks of life to propose an outstanding film that aptly captures the Zeitgeist of its époque – and to present it for discussion with the public. The series takes place Wednesdays at 19:00 at SAVVY Contemporary.

Concept: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Curators: Elena Agudio, Antonia Alampi & Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein
Project Coordinators: Kelly Krugman & Gwen Mitchell