Update on documentary film
 

Dear friends greetings to all. its good to be back and see discussions getting more professional and detailed though not less heated sometime.
Here is weblink to http://www.gfmstudio.com/productions/lostcrusaders
where you could watch trailer of the film in the land of the lost crusaders. It seems that postprodaction very close to final stage of editing and we will soon see this film, that I belive evolved in process of editing and will present now many issues and topics aside from just fencing, and as such will be interesting not only to modern swordsmen, but ethnographers and philosophers as well.
best wishes to all.

Vakhtang

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

I knew very little about that region. All I know is that the region has been resisting foreign rule since from the Seleukid and Romans to Turks and Russians... and now my curiousity is awoken thanks to that short little film and mention of the Khevsurs... :D

Western ignorance of the small Caucasian tribes and of Khevsurs in particular is astonishing.
Check, for example, the book by J. Christoph Amberger " The secret history of the sword" published in the US in 1996, p. 165-168.
There, he describes a tale told by the young American traveler Richard Halliburton, who allegedly went to the Caucasus and met these strange people. Halliburton's pictures of the Khevsurs ( he spell their name as Khevsoor) are reproduced by Amberger.
Then, Amberger writes :'... since his is the only published account of a Westerner having visited the region and observed some of the more picturesque traditions, I am tempted to believe at least the description of what he witnessed".
Having said that, he continues:" My attempt to verify the existence of the Khevsoor remained futile".

Well, their "existence" had been "documented" in multiple books, including the great " Twelve secrets in the Caucasus" by Essad Bey ( published in the 1920s).
And, being totally ignorant about their own non-existence, they lived happily in their ancestral homes, and their region was labeled as such on every map. Moreover, in the 1990s, every "Westerner" could have bought a plane ticket to Tbilisi, drive ~50 km ( 30 miles) and find himself right smack in the middle of the "lost crusaders".
Futile, my foot...
Lazy...

I don't know, maybe a lot has changed since 1996, but aside from this book that you have mentioned from 1920 and of course the Amberger book if you check google today there are literally pages and pages of information on Khevsurs on the internet.
My point being that the ignorance seems to be more localized to Amberger himself than to Westerners as a whole. ;) :)

Ariel :) that were exectley my thoughts at first - lazy ! Later I softened my atitude. :D
Trully things had changed , its hard to blame Amberger since in 1996 there were no materials on internet about any Caucasuan tribe.Non of the republiks of caucasus had at the time means to develop internet network , most were involved in fight for independense.Not all Caucasians nations reemerged succsesfully from brake of the USSR. You might remember the end of bloody strugle for Chechen republic. But anyway its way diferent now and lots of materials coming to light. Small International conferences on Caucasus if not numerous but plenty at least. I attended few at Columbia myself.