Helping out a brother in arms

Ken Mondschein, a student of historical fencing, originally from NYC, contacted AEMMA and asked if we'd be willing to help him in creating a demo of him narrating the Battle of Poitiers (1356) for the possibility of narrating a series on History Channel. After much discussion, AEMMA agreed to assist Ken and the film crew, scheduled on Thanksgiving Monday.

The Battle of Poitiers was fought between the English and French, which highlighted Edward, the Black Prince ("a bad ass" as Ken puts it) where the English had about 6,000 foot soldiers and 1,000 archers against the 3,000 bowman, 500 knights and 17,000 foot soldiers on the French side. The battle was won by the English, and to add further misery to the French, their King John II was captured. The demo focused on the English foot soldiers and how they defeated the heavily armoured French knight.

The AEMMA personnel included David M. Cvet and Kel Rekuta (both armoured), Aaron Bolarinho (unarmoured) and Jacqueline Miller who was a great assistant in harnessing up. She also took the photos in this post as well as those found on the AEMMA photo album.

The day began around 8am at the salle d'armes on Dupont, loading up the Jeep and pickup truck, and north to Newmarket, where the site was arranged at a horse farm near the woods. A timeless setting with trees and a babbling brook which could look like any period in history. The day concluded about 4pm, with the film crew having generated tons of video. Editing will take this volume down to about 2 minutes to present to History Channel. Good luck to Ken, and hopefully, he'll get the gig!

Sick Kids gig

On Thursday afternoon, Oct 8, David M. Cvet of AEMMA, assisted by Alex Wagner also of AEMMA delivered a presentation to a group of excited children and patients at the Hospital for Sick Children. The presentation included a combination of a brief background on heraldry, having the kids draw and colour their own coats of arms, and how a man shall be armed in the 14th century, called the "Tin Man" presentation within the hospital. Thanks goes out to Susie Petro, Child Life Specialist of the Hospital. This is the fourth such gig for David and AEMMA, and undoubtedly, more will be scheduled in the new year.