Reclaiming The Blade

As some of you might remember from an earlier column, I'm a big advocate of understanding the realities of swordsmanship and armed combat. Not necessarily in order to make gaming more "realistic", but to provide a strong, educated background from which you can build your gaming in whatever direction you like.

That's why I'm very excited to hear about this film:

http://www.reclaimingtheblade.com/

To quote from one of their press releases:

The Medieval and Renaissance blade, a profound and beautiful object handcrafted by master artisans of old. An object of great complexity, yet one with a singular use in mind- it is designed to kill. The truth of the sword has been shrouded in antiquity, and the Renaissance martial arts that brought it to being are long forgotten. The ancient practitioners lent us all they knew through their manuscripts. As gunslingers of the Renaissance they were western heroes with swords, and they lived and died by them. Yet today their history remains cloaked under a shadow of legend.

The trailer shows swordfights from a ton of different movies, and they interview a bunch of actors as well as serious sword-scholars like Hank Reinhardt and John Clements. Anyone who is interested in mondern swordsmanship, either for the history, for true understanding of the techniquest of medieval combat, or just for the fun and excitement of cinematic swashbuckling (or all of the above), I seriously recommend keeping an eye out for when this airs and seeing it as soon as you can - it looks awesome.

Anyhow, here's the trailer:

UPDATE: The kind folks at Galatia Films have taken pity on this poor geeky blog of mine, and they've added me to the "Friends of RTB" page - a site showing all the other websites out there that are promoting the film. I am one happy nerd at the moment.