The Sultan's Elephant

In 2006 we went to the city of Antwerp in Belgium and were simply blown away by The Sultan's Elephant. Imagine, if you will, a 6 story high wooden elephant that roams the streets of the city, playing out a wonderful narrative with a giant wooden girl who appears out of a time-capsule that has made a massive impact crater in the middle of a busy city intersection. The event went for 3 days and millions of people swarmed the streets following these giant puppets around. An army of uniformed puppeteers hauled on ropes to provide the locomotion and the gestures. The scale of it was breathtaking.

I wish there was a body here in Australia with the sheer guts to put on a show like this. And with no obvious sponsorship, or merchandising, or crass commercialisation of any kind, and with the massive disruption to the regular city traffic this required, I was really blown away by what a fabulous event for the people of the city this was. It was seriously the finest public art project I have ever seen; if only we had that sort of courage, wit and imagination down here.

The Sultan's Elephant was produced by the French street theatre group, Royal De Luxe. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_de... for more on them.

I edited together this video from the three days of shooting, mostly on my old phone but cleaned up in Final Cut Pro. Enjoy.