Kokolampy

A documentary adventure about man´s romantic yearning. In the beginning there was the egg.

Amongst the belongings left behind by my granduncle was an egg of an elephant bird—one of the last living dinosaurs, extinct on Madagascar possibly as late as the 15th century.

As a boy I had admired this egg, propped up on a stand carved from ebony, while listening to tales of crocodile dances, sorcerers and the kokolampy, the ghosts and goblins of the people of the mahafaly. My granduncle had left Germany in the 1930s for Madagascar, where he lived for more than 40 years.

In the vast bush of the unexplored south, he ran a small mine for industrial garnet, while building a house surrounded by beautiful gardens: his own small colonial paradise. After the socialist revolution in the 1970s he left the island and returned to Germany, carrying with him a few wooden boxes full of his hotchpotch souvenirs, the elephant bird`s egg one of these.

After he died in 1986, the egg disappeared. Peculiar and intriguing connections unfold during the search for this egg.

It increasingly appears as if the egg’s disappearance is part of a giant conspiracy. Baffling connections emerge.

What is the connection of the giant bird roc from Marco Polos tales, a spry trophy hunter from Austria and his eccentric botanical collection, the secretive activities of one of the world`s biggest pharmaceutical companies and my granduncle`s hasty departure from Madagascar? Everything seems to make sense.

Might Madagascar be hiding miraculous potions? Immense fortunes? Even the Nazi`s obsession with esoteric lore—everything suggests that a secret is hidden in the island’s South.

The elephant bird`s egg seems to hold the explanation.