The filming of America’s greatest martial arts “Living Legends” has begun in China with Master Mark Gerry hosting the filmed interview. This website will feature them First!

The Documentary Filming of

America’s Legends of the Martial Arts

has begun…

 

 --Castro Valley, CA. August 30, 2005

 

 The flight of the legends is a monumental project that documents the legendary American martial artist that started a cultural evolution!

 

The World Martial Arts Masters Association has embarked on a monumental task of documenting the lives, times and exploits of the greatest martial artists of the 20th century. Naturally, this cinematic endeavor will go on into the 21st century and way beyond.

 

 

Master Mark Gerry is currently producing what he believes to be the very first cinematically documented series of live DVD interviews with the legendary martial artists that started the martial phenomena here in America. These are the renowned Great Grandmasters and Grandmasters that were instrumental in introducing the martial arts to the western world. Many are presently Hall of Fame Inductees in the World Martial Arts Masters Association of which he is a founding member.

 

 

This major project began when World Martial Arts Masters Association founding members thought it would be a great idea to chronicle and document the great masters that were responsible for introducing and proliferating the Asian fighting traditions for posterity sake both here and abroad. 

 

 

Basically, their reasoning was to film interviews of all of the legendary great masters that are still living and document them so that history will have a chronicled account of their life, times and contributions the world.

 

 

In what has to be one of the most ambitious projects, the “America’s Martial Arts Legends” series will feature the true career martial artists that have charted the course of their “art” through their deeds, actions, films, words and dedicated teachings. For, it is these older dedicated martial arts masters that have carried on the tradition that we practice today.

 

 

Unfortunately, many great legendary martial arts pioneers that preceded their contemporaries never lived in a time where their knowledge could be documented in such fashion as live DVD filming. But, we are thankful that, through their students, these teachings have arrived in tact and that the martial traditions are carried forth.  Through them, their teacher’s personalities, beliefs, philosophies, and actual imagery of these legendary martial artists remain alive. These are the men that will be featured in this extensive series sponsored and produced by the World Martial Arts Masters Association.

 

 

Gerry’s ambitious undertaking has began with actually interviewing and filming the original Grandmasters that were inducted into the Martial Arts Masters Association “Hall of Fame”.  These distinguished Great Grandmasters and Grandmasters have already earned a birth in the America’s Martial Arts Legends by virtue of being inducted into the “Hall of Fame” and it was decided that it was a very good place to start filming.

 

Presently, the preliminary filming and documentary schedule includes featuring such legendary martial arts icons as Al Novak, Ralph Castro, Wally Jay, Adriano Emperado, Al Dacascos, Gene LeBell, Bob Wall, Ming Lum, Dan Tosh, Bob Maschmeier, Cynthia Rothrock, Max Pallen, T.R. Crimi, Clarence Lee, Ted Tabura, George Anderson, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Joe Lewis, Willy Cahill, Emil Bautista, Carlos Navarro and many other early America martial artists that introduced their styles to the western world.

 

Should one think that this endeavor is a personality profile for celebrity status among martial artists, we should reiterate that it is meant to document history, not to publicize a personality for publicity sake. The inclusions in this series have been responsible for essentially keeping the connection to the past alive and those are the honored and distinguished legends that will be documented for posterity.

 

The featured host of the series will be Master (Sigung) Mark Gerry, President of the World Martial arts Masters Association.  He will be hosting each 2-hour segment. Naturally, asking the questions that the world wants to know about their art, their teachings and their life. These filmed interviews will be quite candid ---{on and off of the dojo floor} ---and will be as personal in nature as have ever been asked of the masters. This is simply because we are documenting history for posterity sake and do not want to have any ambiguities.

 

Sigung Gerry’s candid conversations with the grandmasters will include such interesting subjects as the history of their art, their teachers, students, training methods, contributions to the martial arts, anecdotes, verbal lessons passed from their teacher, training experiences, hardships in progressing, and all of the tough questions in between. 

 

 Stay tuned to learn a lot about the art you thought you knew…