We’re proud to present a rare Cape Town screening of MARIO, Billy Woodberry’s long-awaited film on the Angolan-born, Pan Africanist thinker and revolutionary Mario Pinto de Andrade.
Along with Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto and Marcelino dos Santos, Mario de Andrade was part of the pioneering quartet of poet-scholars who founded the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) in Lisbon and planted seeds for nationalist struggle in Portuguese colonies across the continent – respectively, they co-founded PAIGC, MPLA and Frelimo.
An early follower of the negritude literary movement, Mario moved to Paris to study and join the editorial team of the magazine Presence Africaine, a temple of the movement, and to organise the Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris (1956) and Rome (1959). In Paris, he met the filmmaker Sarah Maldoror whom he married and collaborated with. In Rome, an encounter with Fanon led Mario and his comrades to relocate to the continent. Following independence, he became critical of the cult around Neto in Angola and joined the first government of freed Guinea-Bissau where he served as Minister of Culture.
Of the founding quartet of CEA, Mario remained closest to their shared love for poetry. He edited the landmark “Anthology of Black Poetry of Portuguese Expression” (1958), and published widely on what he called “poetry of combat”.
Mario de Andrade was one of the great theorists of liberation. Mostly, he was a student. Billy Woodberry’s is a beautiful, loving study of his lifework.
When: Wednesday, 19 August 2026 from 7pm
Where: Chimurenga Factory, 157 Victoria Road, Woodstock
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