Gambo's O Heroi

The 2004 film o Herói by Zézé Gamboa was filmed toward the end of the 30-year war in Angola. Gamboa originally worked for Angolan television, but ever since the war’s end in 2002, he says the Angolan film industry has been booming, even though there are no film studios. The Angolan film institute IACAM was in ruins for decades, but is now up and running, and has been charged with building more cinemas, and assisting Angolan film productions. Gamboa attests that many people in Angola are illiterate. He adds, “they can't read books, but they understand everything about films. They speak the language, see the images. It is a powerful medium for development.” Gamboa also says that he sees his films as contributing to the task of national reconstruction. “The Hero is a universal story,” he says. “In Central Europe, Latin America, Africa and in all the places where there is or there was war, hundreds of thousands must deal with the stigma, try to survive and become a part of post-war society. The aim of this movie is to show children—the former instruments of war—that it is possible to live in peace.”

In o Herói, Vitório, who was forced to fight in the war at age 15 and then fought in the war for 20 years, has lost a leg to land mine and now lives on the street in Luanda. The film opens with Vitório impatiently waiting to be fitted with a prosthesis and increasingly hinges upon his prosthesis, which is later stolen by a gang of street kids. Eventually, Manu, a kid who has lost his father and mother to the war, buys the fake leg on the black market, and it becomes an object that he prays to or with, asking for his father to be returned to him. Meanwhile, Vitório befriends Judite, a prostitute who is searching to be reunited with her missing son. Many families have been separated and many family members disappeared as a result of the war. Also, because of the war, the economy is faltering. Teachers in Luanda are on strike, and Manu’s teacher Joana has little patience for a classmate who returns to Angola after studying in the United States. The film then begins to weave these characters’ stories together. 

I’m interested in responses that take the following into account:

- Vitório’s prosthesis as an object that might be compared and contrasted to the mask in Black Girl and the shoes in And So Angels Die.

- The class differences between the characters in o Herói.

- o Herói and La Vie Est Belle are very different films that both take place in war torn countries. Similarities? Differences?

- Prostheses (and/or their lack) appear in the films Turtles Can Fly, Kandahar, Saving Face, and o Herói. How might you read these films comparatively? 

Also, after viewing many non-Western films this semester, I would like you to think about what connections you are noticing and what repeated themes have caught your attention. Please begin to reflect on why you might be seeing these connections and/or why you think these themes are so prevalent (taking for granted that in many ways the films I chose do reflect not only a flawed world view, because they cannot appropriately represent “world film,” or “postcolonial film,” but also my own personal biases).