Aimé Césaire
Birth : 1913-06-26, Basse-Pointe, Martinique, France
Death : 2008-04-17
Self (archive footage)
Self (archives)
Himself / Poet and Politician
In five parts, this documentary tells the story of the colonisation of the French Overseas Territories. Slave descendants, coloniser descendants, historians, admirals, rebellious writers and politicians recount a lasting past that keeps on igniting the economic and social relations of these territories even to this day.
Self
Shortly after his death in 2008, Maldoror made this film about her longtime friend and collaborator, the Négritude poet Aimé Césaire. In this film, she retraces the steps of Césaire’s travels across the globe — particularly back to his hometown in Martinique, where Maldoror interviews his relatives about his life — and her working relationship with Césaire, including fragments of her previous films about him, Un homme, une terre (1976) and Le masque des mots (1987).
Himself - Politician (archive footage)
Martinique Island, 1974. Inspired by the writings of the Martiniquais poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), the dreamer Robert Saint-Rose, known as Zétwall (Star in Creole), aspires to be the first Frenchman to step on the lunar surface.
Self
Self
Self
A three-part study that introduces audiences to the celebrated Martinican author Aimé Césaire, who coined the term "négritude" and launched the movement called the "Great Black Cry".
Léon G. Damas (1912–1978) was the first poet to “live Négritude”, according to the Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist Léopold Sédar Senghor. Cosmopolitan and always in transit, his writing is a chorus of melodies and imagery imbued with angst and melancholy and strongly influenced by jazz and blues. Punctuated by images of the landscapes of French Guiana and the voice of the artist, the film exemplifies the poetic documentary form to which Maldoror frequently returned.
Writer
"Ghost Body" is a personal meditation on the ambivalences of interracial male homosexuality.
Himself
Documentary exploring the thought and work of Aimé Césaire.
Self
Aimé Césaire - Le Masque des mots is a portrait of the Martinican writer who calls himself a rebellious negro and for whom the poetic act represents an act of freedom.
Documentary on the négritude movement through one of its founders, Aimé Césaire.
Self
A film by Sarah Maldoror
Writer
For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.
Writer
This uneven and uninspired documentary of Africa is a collection from various stock footage. Female dancers in mod clothes dance on the Eiffel Tower in comparison to the primitive dances of native Africans. A lone runner trains for a marathon, and a few animals are shown in their natural habitat. Commentary and modern jazz and pop music help to make this seem much longer than 66 minutes.
Screenplay