Moulin à images
One of the most unbelievable scenes from my vacation this summer in Old Quebec City was the Moulin à images … which the English translation websites refer to as the Fabulous Image Mill. Basically we were walking around enjoying a quiet evening along the St Lawrence, just having enjoyed an impromptu Cirque du Soleil show under the bridge of the freeway and on the way back to the hotel saw the biggest projected screen I’d ever seen. Well it turns out it indeed is according to Guinness Book of World Records the largest screen.
The Moulin à images are projected on the 81 huge, ancient grain silos of the Bunge Company in the harbor of Quebec City. The silos become a projection screen 100 feet high by 2,000 feet wide (over 3 football fields) with the great Saint Lawrence River as a backdrop. Officially recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest projection surface in the world, the collection of silos is the equivalent of 25 Imax screens, about a 1/3rd mile long.
The 40-minute show narrates Quebec’s history since its foundation by Samuel de Champlain, through the colonial period, covering the politics of the region, the importance of religion and the major role that it played, the successive periods of administration under France and then under England, technology advances and more… Four centuries of history from 1608 to the present day.
Sometime hard to follow at times, perhaps due to cultural barriers, the pure scale and imagery was epic.
Here are some links to additional information: