Mário tells the story of Mário de Andrade (1928-1990) pan-African intellectual, activist, diplomat and poet who fought all his life for the building of African nations with the fierce conviction that independence from colonialism was the beginning and not the end of the struggle. From Paris where he establishes his intellectual home, to independent Angola, Mário spends a life in exile working and fighting for African sovereignty.
EN
“Are even the best and brightest revolutionary movements doomed to inevitable compromise, betrayal and failure? That question haunts this documentary, a biography of Angolan-born Mário Pinto de Andrade (1928–1990), a key figure in African revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles. Told in a direct, informative style, combining present-day interviews, still photography and archival footage, Mário eschews excessive dramatisation and sentimentality. Legendary American filmmaker Billy Woodberry, a key figure in the L.A. Rebellion film movement of the 1970s and 1980s, brings a pan-African sensibility to the subject, matching de Andrade’s own. Mário returns us to a time when revolution was imagined internationally, not held hostage to nationalist ideologies. Beyond the rich history it recounts, Mário is notable as an interwoven portrait of other central players of the time, including Agostinho Neto, Amílcar Cabral and Mário’s brother, Joaquim, a Catholic priest. There are also interludes with fabled, politically committed filmmakers, like Andrade’s wife Sarah Maldoror (Sambizanga, 1972) and Chris Marker. Don’t miss the final moment when Andrade, asked about the fate of revolutions, brilliantly proposes his theory, and flashes a smile so radiant it’s telling.”
“Combining photographs, archival footage, documents of all sorts, testimonies and songs, Mário weaves a tapestry around Mário Pinto de Andrade, a man whose life was itself a richly layered tapestry. Pinto de Andrade was a multi-faceted figure, moving through several countries in exile or in hiding, working across different literary genres, forging connections to other prominent names – including a close friendship with Amílcar Cabral and marriage to Sarah Maldoror – bouncing between various political activities and organizing colloquiums with Black writers before ultimately serving as the first president of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Yet despite having his fingers in so many pies, the word that his friends most use to define him is integrity. The same can be said of Billy Woodberry’s style. Unlike the early work of his L.A. Rebellion predecessors Charles Burnett and Haile Gerima, which was jagged and fresh, Woodberry’s cinema was mature, well-rounded and tranquil in pace from the very beginning. Here he draws on an impressive amount of research material to create a suitably robust weave, as enduring as the bonds of Pan-African culture that Mário represents.”
Pascal Bianchini:About the way you made the film, what is remarkable is that it deals with a personal story, with a biographical trajectory about someone who had relationships with many people, as a friend, a brother, a comrade, and so on. But also, at the same time, you have the history of decolonisation, of the national liberation movement. How did you manage to follow these two parallel tracks in your film? It always shifts from one aspect to the other one, because Mário’s life was closely linked to this collective story? I suppose it must have been a lot of work for you to find the archives, the interviews, to read books and so on. How did you work to make this film?
Billy Woodberry: As Chris Marker says in his movie The Last Bolshevik, when you choose a figure, you realise that you’re making a story about a figure with a certain itinerary, and that you’re also making a story about a whole epoch, and so many related things. So, in this case, because of what Mário de Andrade was involved in, the moment when he comes about, the way that the process unfolds, the realisation of independence in African countries, etc., it allows us to suggest the larger context, the larger relationships and meanings. Reading books about this was a privilege and a pleasure. I am not tired of that thing. I have worked with different people. We were excited about the issue, and then it became a challenge of finding the best material and how to present it. We have a subject who was involved in that himself, who was generous towards others and gave us a lot of information about others and their contribution and describes different aspects of the process very well. The other thing is the idea of decolonisation. In fact, people are more interested in the concept, but they’re not so knowledgeable about the substance. They’re not interested in the leaders, and they’re not interested in the people. They’re interested in the symbols and the things to make arguments about it. But some people tried to make a difference and some of them were lost in the process. There is something to learn about that.
Billy Woodberry in conversation with Pascal Bianchini3
