Eat Your Enemy

Eat your Enemy is a documentary about martial arts. About aggression. And about spirituality. About winning and losing, about effort and vanity. About East and West, muscular and mental strength. About the relationship between the master and pupil. A film full of paradoxes. Martial arts are more than the bloody pictures we occasionally see on television – images we usually abhor, but may secretly also find exciting. Violence and its prevention is an important theme in our society. In the West, we have gradually become too civilised to fight. We battle with words, and if things occasionally go wrong, there’s always a trauma team ready and waiting. Yet people continue to need fighting. In modern civilisation, there is no place for aggression; we don’t know what to do with it, either. The fact that aggression is a natural emotion that largely shapes our urges and is even necessary is often forgotten. The question is not whether aggression is permissible, but rather how to channel it or prevent it. One answer is by fighting! All martial arts are aimed at mental and physical development in order to become a better human being. Whereas one person is able to turn aggression and rebellion into self-discipline and serenity, the other regards martial arts as a drug and a form of mental masochism. (EH)