Lifestyle

Watch These Massive Puppets Take Over the Streets with Fantastical Performances

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Tony Maples Photography

 

Last month, Montreal celebrated their 375th anniversary as a city with a weekend-long event consisting of performances and a parade unlike any you’ve ever seen before. Instead of seeing large, inflatable cartoon characters, citizens of Montreal lined the streets and watched as massive marionettes walked down the street. The level of realism is absolutely astounding, and the marionettes, which are as tall as houses according to CBC, could even be somewhat scary to young viewers if the event wasn’t so full of good-hearted celebration.

Paired with acrobatics and music, the puppets walked slowly with joints moving perfectly in sync as each marionette has a combination of hydraulics and string-pulling. They also stopped and held performances. “They not only walk the city, they create scenes which allow them to tell their stories. At night, you see their chest moving, like they are breathing—that I must admit is a mechanical thing,” Martin Bolduc, line producer of the celebrations, told CBC.

Global News writes that the huge puppets were made by a French company called Royal De Luxe, who made their North American debut with the Montreal performance. They add that the storyline that inspired the marionettes is “of a girl and her dog searching for the girl’s long lost uncle.”

The two videos below show what it was like to stand in the crowd among marionette giants.