Grain silos to be huge projection screen for Quebec anniversary
Last Updated: Thursday, April 10, 2008 | 3:56 PM ET
CBC News
Quebec City's most famous creative son, Robert Lepage has unveiled a $4.7-million film project to celebrate Quebec's 400th anniversary.
Lepage and his production company Ex Machina unveiled the Image Mill, an outdoor slide and video program billed as the world's largest architectural projection.
Beginning June 20, the night of the solstice, he will project a mosaic of images on the grain silos of Quebec's Old Port.
There are 81 silos and they'll all be in use to create an enormous show — 30 metres high by 600 metres wide — visible from many vantage points in Quebec City and even across the river.
It will take 27 projectors, 238 lighting installations and 329 loudspeakers.
The 40-minute show, with images taken from the archives and new video footage, will tell Quebec City's story, from the time of Samuel de Champlain to the present.
It will cover four major eras in the life of Quebec City: the age of rivers and exploration; the age of dirt roads and settlement; the age of railways and resource development; the age of air travel and communications.
The free show will be repeated 40 times — nightly until July 29.
Lepage, an actor, playwright and director, has directed spectacles for Cirque du Soleil and is working with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. He is also creating an exhibit for Musée de la civilisation de Québec and has been asked to direct Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
With files from the Canadian Press
