While studying drama, she and a group of other black students formed a theatre company called Les Griots.

They gave readings of Césaire and produced Huis Clos, by Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as such playwrights as Pushkin and Synge.

In this period Ducados chose her artist's surname from Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont (the pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse, a French-Uruguayan poet).

Maldoror had explored Surrealist verse in Paris and was intrigued by the connections between its practitioners and French communists.

During this period she also met Ousmane Sembène, a notable Senegalese author who became known as the "father" of modern African cinema.

[3] Here Madoror worked as an assistant on Gillo Pontecorvo's acclaimed film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), set during the nation's separation from France.

The title of this 17-minute film, Monangambée, refers to the call used by Angolan anti-colonial activists to signal a village meeting.

Her first feature film, Sambizanga (1972), was also based on a story by Vieira (A vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier).

It features a poor married woman whose husband Domingos Xavier is arrested and taken away by Portuguese police, and her persistent efforts to find him in the city of Luanda, which had several kinds of prisons.