Customer Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable & informative
Comment: A few years ago Guru Simonet's two video sets on Serah or Serak joined the ever growing list of quality videos produced over the last ten years by a number of Pentjak Silat and Kuntau-Silat instructors. Perhaps the first videos to reach a large audience, Guru Simonet's two 2-disk sets on beginning and advanced Silat concepts do a fine job of presenting the history, theory, concepts, techniques, and applications of this still relatively unknown art. Also shown are very nice demonstrations of the 18 jurus by Simonet and some of his students, who look very good and are certainly a credit to Guru Simonet. In the first or beginning DVD set, the first six jurus or forms are shown, and in this advanced set, the other 12 for a total of 18 jurus are demonstrated. Also some lankha or lower art forms with footwork are shown. Aided by professional filming, editing, and a frenetic hard-rock musical accompaniment this video remains one of the most dramatic and informative ever produced on the subject.
I had the opportunity to see Gurus Simonet and his partner, Addy Hernandez, do a demo at the 2004 Dragon Fest in Glendale, CA held by Gerald Okamura, and also met Pak Victor de Thouars of Pentjak Silat fame there. My style of southern Philippines Kali in which I hold instructor rank is said to be about 25 percent Silat, so I have always wanted to learn more about the subject. Dozens of applications are shown, including many empty-hand, and also some knife and stick applications. Guru Simonet's excellent videos helped me to broaden and deepen my knowledge of the art of Silat.
If you enjoyed this video I can also recommend the five DVD Kali-Silat set by Jim Mahan and Roger Lewis which is available on e-Bay (I mention it since it doesn't come up on Amazon), the Silat videos from Stevan Plinck and Richard Crabbe de Bordes (also available from Paladin), and Steve Gartin's video (also from Paladin), and Ron Balicki's Kali Entries and Combos video. Also, if you can find it is the Blitzing Sticks video that Danny Inosanto did at the VDT Silat Academy in Bellflower, which shows a large number of entries, combos, and grappling applications. It is very strong on the Serak takedown applications, and which he mixes in with the John La Costa system escrima stick entries for an extremely effective combination.
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