MONGABAY INTERVIEW

Documenting the African elephant’s ‘last stand’: Q&A with filmmakers Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson by John C. Cannon for MongaBay

CLICK TO READ MONGABAY FILM ARTICLE

WALKING THUNDER: ODE TO THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT WAS AN OFFICIAL SELECTION FOR SCREENING AT THE 10TH ANNUAL SANTA FE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL, OCTOBER 17-21, 2018.

---

As documentarians working in multiple media, we look to create a film that speaks to the future of humanity. Not merely a wildlife film, “Walking Thunder: Last Stand of the African Elephant”, strives to be a poetic, and intimate documentary, focusing on a remarkable being, the elephant, and to underscore the essential role of “the other,” that which the non-human plays in the mind and spiritual ecology of humankind. A child’s eyes, his wonder, allows us to reconnect with our own childhood awe and respect of the wild while helping to remind of us the legacy we leave to future generations.

We have been photographing and interviewing indigenous, place based people, throughout eastern and southern Africa for more than a decade. Wildlife became an integral part of the work as we came to appreciate how these people survived and thrived in a seemingly inhospitable environment. Expanding on years of documentary photography, still images naturally evolved to moving images as a need to give voice to those who might not otherwise be heard.

Over a span of more than seven years of making this film, the story moves from a place of joy and innocence we first shared in witnessing the elephant with our young son, to one of deep concern, not just for the elephant, but also childhood’s future, and indeed the future of all life on earth.

The goal of the film is not simply to raise awareness of the plight of the elephant but to provoke people to examine how they live in this world and to appreciate its splendor. How do we encourage or stifle our children’s imaginations? How do we teach them to survive in this world – a world of societies and civilizations as well as a natural world larger than we imagine.

By creating an opportunity for other people, other families, to travel with us to these far off places, this film should lead people to recognize the beauty, importance and value of their own immediate worlds. We hope this film will play an essential role in demonstrating that neither the earth nor humanity can afford to lose a being such as the elephant, so vital to the ecology and spirit of the planet. The elephant’s future is nothing less than humanity’s fate.

—Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson

CYRIL CHRISTO AND MARIE WILKINSON (Directors & Producers) have been working together as a husband and wife team since 1997, when they began investigating and documenting the relationship between the indigenous human and natural world on five continents.

Their concerns about global warming, globalization and the future of life on earth started in 1996 on their first trip together abroad to Angel Falls in Venezuela. Cyril’s and Marie’s first book of photography in black and white – Lost Africa: The Eyes of Origin (Assouline 2004) explores the ecological and man-made challenges facing tribes from Ethiopia to Namibia.

Their second project, a testament to the African elephant, is published as Walking Thunder: In the Footsteps of the African Elephant (Merrell 2009). Walking Thunder was honored by the International Photography Awards in the category of Best Nature Photography Book. Now, with their son Lysander, who has been with them on several trips to the Arctic and to East Africa, Cyril and Marie are working on a dedication to three endangered bioregions – the Arctic, the African savannah and the forests of India, and their iconic predators.

The project, called In Predatory Light, was published by Merrell Publishers in October 2013. In film, Cyril produced the 1987 Academy Award nominated feature documentary, A Stitch For Time, directed by Nigel Noble.

.

CYRIL & MARIE

 Marie is a graduate of Yale College and Yale School of Architecture; Cyril attended Cornell University and is a graduate of Columbia College. They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico and spend part of the year in Amagansett, New York.