#263 “The Gracies and the Birth of Vale Tudo” Movie

A photo of the Gracies circa 1962 from the family archive, donated by Angela Gracie to the film.

All of us in the jiu-jitsu community know bits and snippets of the story of the family who brought us jiu-jitsu. That knowledge is likely related to how close one’s instructor is to the Gracie family. Due to the Gracie clan’s large size and understandable biases of our sources, it’s unlikely any of us have a very comprehensive picture of the family history. Most of the answers to our questions about the very large and complicated Gracie family and jiu-jitsu’s history are unclear.

Since then much time has passed. The Brazilian jiu-jitsu community has continued to hope that the film would one day become available. We recently learned that work is finally nearing completion on Bota’s film and brought him on today’s episode of the FightWorks Podcast to give an update on a project that will unquestionably make a big impression on jiu-jitsu lovers everywhere.

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