Two Black women revolutionaries walk into a TV studio—and history catches fire.
For the France 3 show, Mosaïque, Sarah Maldoror met Assia Djebar on Sunday March 29, 1987 on the occasion of the publication of her book Ombre Sultane. She discusses the status of the traditional woman in the Arab Muslim world: "The woman is always on the move, she is never anchored. To the extent that she is always in the process of repudiation, she is in the process of leaving. With Ombre Sultana, I wanted to make the reader feel that these women from elsewhere are like her, even if the reader is Western.
Direction
Maldoror's gaze refuses to consume—she collaborates.
Writing
Djebar speaks in paragraphs that deserve to be tattooed.
Director
Sarah Maldoror
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This aired on France 3's Mosaïque, a rare state-funded space for anticolonial voices in 1980s French television—already being dismantled by the time this broadcast happened.
Djebar strategically uses 'Western reader' throughout to position her Algerian women as subjects with complex interiority, not objects for liberal empathy.
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