The Elephant Queen Outreach & Mobile Cinema
October 1, 2024OnSight has been supporting The Elephant Queen outreach team who are on a mission to redefine conservation education, with a strategy to inspire and educate with film, theatre, and dedicated resources. Set up by the filmmakers, the Elephant Queen Outreach program is delivered by a team of ten Kenyan actors and their support team that travel across Kenya, visiting communities impacted by human/wildlife conflict. Partnering with over 50 conservation organisations across the country has made delivering the program possible.
The Elephant Queen is the inspiring story of Athena, an elephant matriarch, who leads her family on an epic journey across the African savannah, directed by Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble and carefully Post Produced at OnSight with Post Producer, Jeff Halsey and colour by Andy Lee. It is a tale of love, loss and homecoming narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
The Elephant Queen was the first feature acquired by Apple and used to launch its TV+ streaming service. Executive Director of the outreach program, Victoria Stone said, “Our vision was always to take the film back into the community to use it to inspire people to care and understand, and ultimately to make a difference for elephants in the country in which the film was made. Five years later, we can see the results and prove that it’s working.”
The program includes a series of 30 learn-to-read books based on wildlife and the environment. The film is screened alongside an interactive theatre piece, The Trial Of Athena. All look to highlight the similarities between elephants and ourselves, their role in the ecosystem, and the relevance of this in the face of Kenya’s disappearing wilderness.
To date, the team has presented the program to over 130,000 people, telling Athena’s story in 3 languages, in over 240 schools and communities. The Elephant Queen program sees the youth as the future custodians of Kenya’s natural heritage, so having these conversations with school children is hugely important. As part of this, the team has created a conservation education circuit that can be used by other mobile education programs. The success of the program has meant that demand is growing for the team to take the film and their performance to more communities and spread the word beyond Kenya.
“We have lived with elephants all our lives, but it is only today, after watching this film, that we truly understand them.” – Maasai elder, Amboseli
“The film has shown us that elephants are just like us.” – 8 year old child, on the boundary of Tsavo East
