Well, what a staggering month it has been!

The World Championships in Cairo will see Fighting Films there in full force, not only covering the tournament in our own inimitable style, but also launching 'The IJF Coaching Series'. We have been working flat out, for 12 hours a day for the last month, to bring Yasuhiro Yamashita's vision of significant coaching tools for Judo coaches to fruition. The first two DVD's in the series have been produced with funding from the All Japan Judo Federation, the Japan Foundation and Hakuhodo, a Japanese media company.

These DVD's are, for the first time, produced in five different languages; English, French, Spanish (the three official languages of the IJF), Japanese and Arabic (language of the host nation at this year's Worlds). The DVDs will be double sided, NTSC and PAL, though only the PAL version is available right now, (NTSC in about a month) and the aim is for them to be used Worldwide to improve the standard of Judo coaching around the globe, in particular in third world countries.

One of the DVD's is produced and directed in Japan by my geat friend Shinji Inaba and his company, Inaba Planning. Shinji was the Director of the Judo TV broadcast from the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and has the most incredible collection of historical Judo footage, some of which is included in this production. Titled 'Judo in School Education', it deals with the spread of Judo in Japan, including womens and childrens judo, blind judo, Jigoro Kano and the history of Judo, and features clips from this year's All Japan Judo Championships. It also includes a fascinating interview with Vladimir Putin talking about the impact that the sport has made on his life. But in particular it concentrates on the use of Judo in the Japanese Education system, showing a class at a Japanese school in considerable detail.

I have produced and directed the other DVD. Titled 'Coaching Judo to Juniors'it is centred around the IJF 2005 Spring Coaching Seminar in Rio de Janeiro, where three experts presented their methods of coaching juniors to coaches from all over the World. The exprts are Michel Brousse from France, Franco Capalletti from Italy and Peter Gardiner from Scotland. The main menu of this production is laid out like a Judo lesson (first impressions,warm-up games, ukemi, tachi-waza techniques, ne-waza techniques, cool down games, etc.) and there are numerous ideas in this DVD that will inspire coaches from some very exciting Judo games, through to new ways of introducing some of the sport's principal techniques.

Yasuhiro Yamashita introduces both DVD's in his role as Coaching and Education Director of the IJF and I have been able to include some short clips from his incredible contest career in 'Coaching Judo to Juniors'. He will be giving away copies of each DVD to coaches attending the Cairo World Championships and any profits made on subsequent sales, through Fighting Films, will be ploughed back into production of further DVD's in 'The IJF Coaching Series'. I believe that this is a very important step by both Mr Yamashita's Education and Coaching Commission, and the IJF as a whole, which for the first time is reaching out to communicate directly on the ground with the people who can really make a difference to the way Judo is perceived and played around the World - the coaches.

Unfortunately there has been a down side to concentrating all of Fighting Films' efforts and resources into the making of these two productions: the release of our Athens 2004 Olympics productions has been delayed again. However, we have now managed to source the outstanding footage that we were missing from Athens, and once the World Championships is over, we will be making the Olympic DVD's top priority. I can only apologise to all those of you that are waiting to watch the brilliant Judo from Athens, and hope that you will find the release of 'The IJF Coaching Series' some compensation for the massive delay with the Athens DVDs.

Previous Articles:

Feb '05: Behind The Camera - When are the Olympics going to be ready?
May '05: Behind The Camera - IJF Coaching Series Part 1
Oct '05: Behind The Camera - 2005 World Judo Championships
Apr '06: Behind The Camera - The Fighting Films GB World Cup
Aug '06: Behind The Camera - 2006 European Championships
Dec '06: Behind The Camera - 2006 World Team Championships
Oct '07: Behind The Camera - 2007 World Championships and the FF GB Judo World Cup
Oct '07: Behind The Camera - Autumn and Winter 2007