More than four years of hard work are finally earning some recognition for a brand new epic martial arts documentary that dares to explore more historical and cultural layers to the versatile Afro-Brazilian martial art, Capoiera. The new film, Body Games: Capoiera And Ancestry (Jogo de Corpo) became an award winner at the Zanzibar International Film Festival late last month, featuring the work of Essex University historian Matthias Röhrig Assunção and thirty-year veteran Capoeira teacher and practioner Mestre Cobra Mansa who recorded over 140 hours of footage and audio for the new film in conjunction with Essex University’s core history project, The Angolan Roots of Capoeira: Transatlantic Links of a Globalised Performing Art.
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art that has taken the world by storm. It is a beautiful, mysterious, physical and spiritual practice that combines dance, combat, theatre and music. It creates a state of mind that attracts millions of people around the world. It is the only international martial art with an African heritage.
“Angolan Roots of Capoeira” follows the Afro-Brazilian Capoeira master, Cobra Mansa and his team on travels through Angola and Brazil in search of the historical roots of Capoeira. It is also a personal journey as Cobra Mansa is a descendant of slaves who were brought from Africa to build Brazil. In Angola Cobra Mansa encounters men and women whose combat games, dances, musical instruments and traditions bear striking similarities to Brazilian Capoeira. In Brazil he meets with Capoeira masters who are influential voices of Capoeira’s foundations and its African heritage.
Accompanied by Capoeira historian Matthias Röhrig Assunção, and ethnomusicologist Christine Dettman, Cobra Mansa finds an Angola full of amazing characters amidst a culture rich with musical, dance and combat game traditions. By sharing Capoeira with Angolan Engolo and Kambangula dancers and fighters and by learning their movements, the team creates a dialogue between Africa and Brazil that poetically develops themes of roots, origins, slavery, Africa, Brazil and the Black Atlantic.
