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Logline

A Los Angeles community, built around the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira, fights to save their cultural center—a place where the radical political act of inclusion reminds us what’s possible when all truly belong.

Synopsis

Capoeira has crept into many arenas of pop culture: mixed martial arts, Olympic ceremonies, and blockbuster video game franchises have all borrowed from it. But the art itself, and the history underneath it, have gone mostly unexamined on screen. This film bridges that gap, tracing capoeira’s roots among enslaved African communities in Brazil and following it 500 years later to a charismatic teacher named Mestre Boneco who left a thriving school in Rio De Janeiro to start all over again in a rented room in Los Angeles.

In Bahia they say a thing that has dendê has soul in it. CBLA’s academy had dendê. Would that soul survive?

The documentary opens in 2020, with a phone call. The academy had been sold. CBLA was already reeling from the pandemic and its shifting quarantine rules, and now the building that housed their cultural center was disappearing too. What followed was a year of limbo: no space, no timeline, no answers. Combining a mix of vérité and archival, the film stays with the people living inside that question as they scramble, argue, grieve, and remember what the place had been to them for two decades.

It builds to the batizado, the “baptism,” the year’s most important event, when new students are formally brought into the group and senior students graduate to the next cord. A week of workshops, live music, international guests, and parties that run late. It’s the closest thing the community has to a holy day. Casa Tem Dendê captures the last batizado ever held in the academy, and at its center, Osei Vita, aka Formando Axé, graduating as the first American-born black cord in Mestre Boneco’s lineage.

Meet the Filmmakers

Matthew Barber — Director/producer
Matthew grew up in a conservative, religious environment. That experience gave him an early, personal understanding of how communities, for better or worse, shape the people inside them. When Matthew left his faith in 2011, he joined CBLA and discovered the power of a new, more open and accepting agnostic community. He’s spent years as a student. Having now reached the level of Graduado, Matthew is telling this story from inside the room, not simply observing from outside of it. He’s passionate about showcasing to the world what a community can look like when race, creed, sexuality, and gender have no bearing on a person’s standing in that group. Matthew has spent over twenty years in television and film, most recently producing the global hit series Ride or Die (Amazon) and editing the Emmy-winning Dopesick (Hulu) and Hunters (Amazon). He’s directed episodes of Lethal Weapon, The 100, and Chuck, along with several feature documentaries.

Orzai Rizo — Producer
Orzai has spent nineteen years producing commercial work for brands like Burger King, California Milk, and Reese’s. In 2019 she launched her own production company, Juba Films — named for her son’s capoeira nickname — which now works with a diverse slate of clients across the industry, and she consults for payroll companies and emerging production outfits on the side.

Greg Hatton — Producer/Cinematographer
For decades, Greg was one of the only African-Americans working in international motorsports before an eye for images pulled him into filmmaking. Over the past eight years he’s shot commercials, documentaries, and narrative features that have played festivals worldwide, and his photography and writing have appeared in print and won awards internationally. As a long-standing member of Capoeira Brasil Los Angeles, he’s not just behind the camera on this film — he’s helping shape where the story goes.

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Contact

For inquiries, please contact [email protected].