7/25/2005: Amazing French puppetry celebrating Verne
 

http://cellar.org/2005/verne1.jpg

Thanks to Warch who spots this amazing French street puppetry, celebrating Jules Verne. The images shown here are pretty large but necessary to show the scale and the detail of the thing. It's massive, and it moves around in a natural way via its operators. They also have a massive elephant puppet, see the photo gallery here. Meanwhile the girl walks, rides her scooter, reacts to the crowd:

http://cellar.org/2005/verne2.jpg

Warch also found two more amazing galleries before I could even post the images:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/489202.html

http://www.lean.to/gallery/royaldeluxe

And a full story that explains it in detail:

In 2005, France is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the death of one of its most popular writers: Jules Verne. The many events organised for this national commemoration will principally be held in Nantes, the novelist's birthplace in western France, and in Amiens, his place of residence, in the north.
...
Through his work, science (in the general sense, including the social sciences) became fodder for fiction. From 1862 until his death in 1905, encouraged by his editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Jules Verne produced some sixty novels grouped under the broad title Extraordinary Journeys. His genius lies in his ability to draw poetry out of the most austere learning and to create an atmosphere of fantasy based on exact scientific data.

The writer's dreamlike and avant-garde vision will be represented on stage by the street theatre company "Royal de Luxe" during a large town parade and four days of festivities in Nantes, from 19 to 22 May, and in Amiens, from 16 to 19 June.

The programme enticingly announces "The Visit of the Sultan of India Atop His Time-Travelling Elephant". The show will go on tour to Le Havre, in the north of France, in mid-July, then London in September, wrapping up in Bilbao, Antwerp and Calais in 2006. In parallel to this, video director Pierrick Sorin will present a short film on the same theme, inspired by the gigantic, elephant-shaped steam engine imagined by Jules Verne in his novel The Steam House.

Take that, Industrial Light & Magic. :lol:

Amazing. So frickin' cool.

Very good.
Maybe the french have finally found a game they can play.
Win?........we'll see. :headshake

The second link actually has captured video of the girl and an elephant. You have to see the motion on the girl to get the full idea that it is actually a humungo puppet. It's like a giant marionette with a combination of rope pulls and radio controls. It's amazing how many people it takes to work this chick. A cast of thousands.

The girl and the elephant are amazing... I'm not so sure about the cars stitched to the road though. I don't get it.

http://www.lean.to/albums/royaldelux..._img.sized.jpg

Those are just French "boots." The people in that picture are cussing and calling the parking cops to get them removed so they can drive home.

I don't quite get it either Jinx. The explaination as to why really wasn't there. There was some explaination as to how it was done. Pretty complex for art. Apparently, "they" actually cored through the pavement and threaded the rope underneath the blacktop. The rope is one piece. There was some mention on the detail in the cars (?) such as papers on the seats inside the cars and other stuff in the gloveboxes (again ?).

..now that's funny as hell. :lol2:

Explanation was that it "came to the Little Giant in a horrible dream....and the dream was realized....." Not much of an explanation, but then again they are French.

Apparently the audience watched the little giant sleep and when she had to, she took a pee. Oui!

Good. Now make that into a haiku. :)

That's the french NEA at work. ;)

What's gonna be nasty is when the puppet breaks free and starts devouring people.

test