Black Combat Arts Institute.
CRITICAL NOTE · No. 18
I Discovered Capoeira Through a Van Damme Film
On false first images, and why the wrong door can still lead in
Our first representation of capoeira shattered on contact with real masters. Yet we had discovered the game through cinema — a film directed by and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, The Quest. So, in principle, the pugilistic, spectacular dimension of capoeira was what drew us in: the image of a devastating fighting art, all kicks and combat, nothing of the game, the music, the ruse.
The first image was false — or at least partial, deformed, Hollywood. The real capoeira, met in the flesh, was something else: slower and faster, more cunning, more musical, more social than the film could show. The initial representation had to be broken for the real practice to be seen.
And yet the false image did its work: it opened the door. Without the spectacle that seduced us, we might never have entered the room where the truth was. There is a lesson here about first representations — they are almost always wrong, and sometimes indispensable. The task is not to have no illusions before beginning, but to let them shatter once you are inside, and to keep going. Many arrive at the real through a door marked with a lie.
RELATED NOTES
→ The Ginga Is Killing Capoeira
IN THE CORPUS
→ Black Combat Arts: What They Are
→ Capoeira Is Not Alone in the World
TAGS
Representation · Cinema · Learning · Capoeira
HOW TO CITE THIS NOTE
MALO, Olivier. I Discovered Capoeira Through a Van Damme Film. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Critical Notes [online]. No. 18. 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/notes-en/i-discovered-capoeira-through-a-van-damme-film [accessed date].