Wednesday, 18 May 2011

In the film Jump London, Sebastien Foucan states that "Le Parkour has always existed, free running has always been there, the thing is that no one gave it a name, we didn’t put it in the box. It is an ancient art [...] The Neanderthals, to hunt, or to chase, or to move around, they had to practice the free run." Tangible historical precedents may be traced to movie stuntmen and martial arts practitioners. Hollywood stars and stuntmen such as Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., John Ciampa and Buster Keaton captured parkour-like moves on film as early as the 1920–40s. The latter was also an inspiration for the famous on-foot chase scenes of Hong Kong stuntman, martial artist and actor Jackie Chan.[11] In Eastern martial arts such as Ninjutsu and Qing Gong, movements similar to those of Parkour have been taught for centuries and with a similar aim. In Jump London, Foucan does acknowledge the influence of martial arts movies on the development of Parkour: "We also climbed onto the roof of our school. We pretended we were Ninja warriors".

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