Hollow City

Angola was a Portuguese colony for almost 500 years. The António Salazar-Marcelo Caetano military junta waged its own Vietnam War against Angola and Mozambique (referenced by Ethiopia's Haile Selassie in a 1968 speech, which Bob Marley turned into the song "War"). These wars drained Portugal's economy, and a small army overthrew the junta in 1974 and proceeded to give the colonies their independence. After the US suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger decided to start another war just so that the US could look tough. Aligned with South Africa's apartheid government, the CIA backed warlord Jonas Savimbi. Cuban troops came in to back a different faction that was vying for power. In the context of this, soon-to-be lobbyist Jack Abramoff worked with South Africa's government to film a propaganda movie in Angola. Cuban and South African troops withdrew in the late 1980s, but the fighting continued until Savimbi's assassination in 2002.

Maria João Ganga's "Na cidade vazia" ("Hollow City" in English) looks at Angola in the wake of its devastating civil war. Told through the eyes of a boy wandering the streets of Luanda after his village got massacred, we see a society trying to pick itself back up. Even the poorest families try to make their residences look pretty. Nonetheless, Luanda is probably the closest connection that this boy to the outside world. He meanders through the city with a toy made of string while the children in the group from which he escaped act out a play about a heroic soldier. More adventures await him.

It's a really good movie. I like seeing movies that show us cultures that we rarely see. Even beyond that, it's a reminder of what happened there. I recommend it.