(Re)imagining Maria, (Re)writing Angola’s Revolutionary (His)tories: Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga as Afro-Feminist Film Adaptation, or ‘Rebellious Rewriting,’ of The Real Life of Domingos Xavier

This article analyses the ways in which Sarah Maldoror’s film Sambizanga (1972) adapts Jose Luandinho Vieira’s novella The Real Life of Domingos Xavier (1971), shifting the original text’s emphasis away from a communal painting of political struggle against the Portuguese administration. Vieira choses to marginalise the character Maria, using her as a vehicle by which to mourn and consequently glorify the matyrdom of her dissident husband, whereas Maldoror focuses on Maria’s individuality by making the widow her film’s protagonist. I use Obioma Nnaemeka’s ‘nego-feminism’ theory (2004) to “negotiate” a variety of ideas surrounding feminism and adaptation that characterise Sambizanga’s sophisticated themes and style (Weathers 1969, Bartlett 2004, Dovey 2009, Tcheuyap 2015). Maldoror’s pioneering Afrocentric feminist style of film adaptation is thus articulated as ‘proto-nego-feminist,’ or, in other words, a ‘rebellious rewriting’ of Angola’s revolutionary (his)tories.