Those who follow my museum tours might recall some of my ‘chance encounters’ like boarding a submarine at the Maritime Museum in Genoa. This was my chance encounter in Morocco.
Atlas Film Studios is the second largest film studio in the world, behind Hollywood. Several films were made here or in the surrounding area, including Asterix, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Man Who Would Be King, Kundun, The Mummy Returns and Game of Thrones (Season 3).
I am surprised and delighted when my little tour group pulls up to a pink stucco front gate, flanked by Egyptian figures and Chinese Fu-dogs. In a parking lot just inside the gate, we find a pair of Roman chariots and a reed boat on a trailer, and a studio guide who gives us a tour.
We are escorted past a set where filming was taking place, which we think might have been the new King Tut. Our guide then takes us into a dark hall of columns where Cleopatra was filmed. He told us that some of the images on these pillars were NSFW (not safe for work), though we do not linger long enough to find them.
We walk along the back of a set supported by scaffolding, and into the courtyard where Moses was filmed. I comment on a flowering tree in the courtyard, which the guide said is ‘in bloom’ because flowers are taped onto it. We are then led down an alleyway of another set, and then through a pair of tall, narrow doors, and onto the set of The Mummy Returns (which happens to be one of my favorite movies).
At this point the studio guides stop to let people take photos and selfies on the steps of this set. Our studio guide takes my camera and I strike a pose. And wait. And look at him, and with some exaggeration, strike the same pose again. It takes him a minute to catch on, and then another minute before he stops laughing long enough to take this shot. By now, a sizeable crowd has stopped to watch. At the end of our ‘photo shoot’ he gives me the stage name of “Fatima Tagine” which I adopt for the rest of the day.
Around the next corner is the set for Tut and Asterix. I can see the set for Kingdom of Heaven in the distance between the pillars for Asterix. This is the Jerusalem set, one of the largest free-standing sets built at the time (2005). I beg the guide to take us there, but he says it’s actually built at an adjoining studio and is not part of the Atlas Studio tour, and so he declines. I’m simultaneously disappointed at not being able to touch the walls of Jerusalem, and elated to see it in person, even from this distance. I start taking zoom shots and linger as long as I can before our group wanders on.
We pass Cleopatra’s milk bath pool, and an ark, and a catapult. I enter a Chinese themed building that turns out to be the set for Kundun. I notice that no one else from my group is here… oops… I have now inadvertently separated from my group. I wander around on this set, admiring the details of the props that still stand in the cubby-hole shelves that cover some of the walls. I would later learn that Moroccan craftsmen built the sets, props and costumes for Kundun. After about 20 minutes the studio guide pops in, relieved to finally find his Fatima Tagine safe and sound in Kundun, after he had reportedly looked ‘everywhere else.’
We have lunch on the outdoor terrace of the studio restaurant, and watch as actors come and go out of the micro-apartments that they are housed in, just across the way, which I believe is the Atlas Studio version of the Hollywood Studio trailers. I’m still scheming how to sneak out to the Kingdom of Heaven set, but any plan I might have devised is thwarted when we are herded back to our van for our next destination.
The King of Morocco is very supportive of the film industry and has several times lent the Moroccan Army as extras to epic films being produced here. This link takes you to additional information about the film industry in Morocco.
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Heather Daveno hails from Seattle, Washington, where she works as an office manager by day and a self taught textile artisan by night. In her spare time she is a “hobby historian” and is currently researching the female side of her family history for a book she plans to write, titled: “The Matriarch Diaries.”
You can see her current textile projects at August Phoenix Mercantile and her travels at Daveno Travels.