On Sunday, April 13, regular morning class was cancelled at Chicago Aikikai to accommodate the filming of Blade of the Waning Kingdom, an independently produced feature-length martial arts movie being made in Chicago.

Aside from training, Sundays are usually pretty sedate around Chicago Aikikai and its surrounding neighborhood, and usually only get really busy during seminars. Today, however, it was buzzing with cast and crew, as parts of the dojo served as makeup and wardrobe rooms and multiple different locations.

Chicago Aikikai members were invited to participate or observe the production. Joe Guerrier and his daughter Dee came for a while in the morning to watch the production process. Dwight Sora served as liaison between the dojo and production and also assisted the fight choreographer. Rob Brose and Christian Boswell also performed fight choreography as featured extras in a training scene, and Christian later did double-duty as part of a ninja entourage.

All in all, the filmmakers had a lot of thanks and praise for Chicago Aikikai’s willingness to let them film in the dojo. Cast and crew were asked to attend the regular Sunday intro class one week prior to receive proper orientation in conduct and care of the space, and many expressed in signing up as regular or trial students.

Blade of the Waning Kingdom is a low-budget adventure film set in a mythic world inspired by classic Japanese and Chinese martial arts films. Once completed, the filmmakers hope to submit it to film festivals and make it available for streaming viewing.