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Sambizanga Born in rural France to parents of West Indian and French descent, Sarah Maldoror (1929–2020), like Varda, was 90 when she passed. After working as assistant director on The Battle of Algiers (1966), Maldoror would imbue the same radical spirit as Pontecorvo’s film in her adaptation of José Luandino Vieira’s novella about the events preceding the armed struggle against Portuguese rule in Angola as told through the eyes of Maria, a dock worker’s wife who travels on foot to beg for her husband’s release after his labor organizing efforts lead to his arrest. DIRECTED BY: Sarah Maldoror. WRITTEN BY: Sarah Maldoror, Mário de Andrade, Maurice Pons. WITH: Elisa Andrade, Domingos de Oliveira, Jean M’Vondo, 1972. 102 min. Angola/France. Color. Portuguese. DCP.
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler Sat, Apr 8 | 2pm | TMT
Throughout her over fifty-year career, German surrealist filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (b. 1942) has forged a new and entirely unique cinematic language for fiction filmmaking. With her unconventional and wildly imaginative approach to form, performance, and visual style evident from her debut feature Madame X: An Absolute Ruler , Ottinger breaks open the traditionally male-led swashbuckling genre and produces a spectacular lesbian pirate film set on the ship Orlando , a nod to the titular protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel. Ottinger, who herself has always identified as a lesbian, paces out a cathartic, singular journey for the creative, vibrant women who accompany this transformative voyage. DIRECTED BY: Ulrike Ottinger, Tabea Blumenschein. WRITTEN BY: Ulrike Ottinger. WITH: Tabea Blumenschein. 1977. 137 min. West Germany. Color. German. DCP.
Hester Street
Diary of an African Nun with Hester Street Sun, Mar 26 | 2pm | TMT Diary of an African Nun
Based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker, Julie Dash’s (b. 1952) student film, made while attending UCLA’s MFA program during the groundbreaking L.A. Rebellion period—which saw a massive surge in films made by Black students at the university—explores the interior, spiritual life of a young Black nun in Uganda as she interrogates her devotion to Catholicism. DIRECTED BY: Julie Dash. WITH: Barbara O. Jones, Barbara Young, Makimi Price, Ron Flagge. 1977. 13 min. USA. B&W. 16mm. Hester Street Set in the Jewish community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1896, Joan Micklin Silver’s (1935–2020) debut feature is told through Eastern European immigrant Gitl (Carol Kane) as she grapples with maintaining her personal agency within the traditions of her Jewish faith. For Silver, a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Hester Street was a personal story, which she adapted herself from Abraham Cahan’s novella Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto . A universal narrative about acceptance and identity, Hester Street garnered Kane an Oscar nomination for her performance, and the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2011. DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Joan Micklin Silver. WITH: Steven Keats, Carol Kane, Mel Howard, Dorrie Kavanaug. 1975. 90 min. USA. B&W. Yiddish, English. 4K DCP. Hester Street was restored in 4K from the original 35mm negative by Cohen Film Collection at DuArt Media Services in New York. Color grading was approved by Marisa Silver.
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