Not Pretty, But

Twelve or thirteen years ago, my silat teacher Guru Stevan Plinck, did a video for Paladin Press: Pukulan Pentjak Silat: The Devastating Fighting Art of Bukti Negara-Serak.

The shoot would have been about the time I started training with Guru Plinck, and I heard about it, but had no part in it.

Paladin eventually put it out. It sold moderately well, and was an introduction to Silat Sera's daughter art, Bukti Negara. This was an abbreviated system developed and used as a way to offer entry-level material to Americans, since the senior teacher in the U.S. had a closed-door system for Sera(k). Bukti was designed for old people, cripples, and Americans, so the saying went ...

You can still get the vid on Amazon.com, here.

In those days, if you weren't Indonesian or Dutch-Indo and male, you couldn't study Sera(k) under my teacher's teacher, Pendekar Paul de Thouars. Still can't, if you are a woman.

Bukti was a stripped-down, stand-up, fairly-stiff version of the more complex mother art, had fewer parts, didn't get into weapons, and was, when I began studying it, considered a screening system. This is to say that, if you completed the curriculum, and demonstrated proper respect and attitude along the way, you might be allowed to get past the American handicap and allowed to study the parent art of Sera(k).

That "k," at the end is pretty much silent, and the source of all manner of debate. I don't use it any more when I talk about what we do in our branch.

Um. Anyway, the video was a basic primer, pretty cut-and-dried and by-the-numbers stuff. Bukti teachers eventually added more material, the style evolved, and moved on, and while not yet Sera(k), doesn't seem to be what it once was.

My teacher, who was instrumental in developing this stuff, also moved on, and no longer teaches Bukti, only Sera.

The attached video is the opening few seconds of the Bukti vid, which, as you can see, isn't something that would translate very well to the silver screen for an action movie fight scene. Not pretty, doesn't look like he's really doing very much. It looks fake.

Guru said, I'll walk down the alley, you four come at me as you will, let's see what happens, okay?

Nobody was moving at full speed and power and he knew they were there and going to jump him. It was but a demo; however, it was unrehearsed, it was the first take, and what you see is what happened, save for the kick at the end, which was cut in because Paladin wanted a kick in it.

I have talked to a couple of the guys who were in the demo, and they allowed as how the floor of that alley was not at all soft, and the little namby-pamby throws Guru Plinck was doing felt a lot more effective than they looked ...

Check it out: