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I always want us to stay at the leading edge of motion picture technology."
That statement by Andre Picard, recently departed Vice - President, Film, of IMAX corporation, only begins to describe what company is is all about. For most people, if they're aware of it at all, IMAX has come to be associated with they innovative short films (The Dream is Alive, Mountain Gorilla, and the Oscar nominated Fires of Kuwait) about nature or space that are projected in 70mm eight storeys high. Or they've seen IMAX's first feature, the Rolling Stones concert film At The Max, which has grossed $13 million in just over a year in release. But the public is generally not aware of the full range of motion picture services or technologies IMAX provides.
Nor do they realize that IMAX is a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario. That simple perception of IMAX should change, as the company continues to expand its influence and make its presence known around the world.
IMAX was officially incorporated in 1967, when filmmakers Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroiter and Robert Kerr were inspired by two films, Labyrinth and Polar Life, that were unveiled at Montreal's Expo '67. Those movies used a multi - screen format which could show different images simultaneously or the same image on more than one screen to greater effect. The partners' IMAX film concept, which needed a larger and more complicated projector than any in existence at the time, was actually developed in record time; it premiered just three years later with the movie Tiger Child at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan. Filmmaker Stephen Low says that the founders were, "nice, decent men, the kind of people who were passionate about it from a long way back."
The extraordinary quality of IMAX films, due to being ten times as large as a conventional 35mm picture frame (the standard for most movies), soon struck a chord with the public and the concept spread like wildfire. Today there are some 81 permanent IMAX theatres in the world (many more can be converted into temporary IMAX theatres), in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. In Canada alone, there are nine theatres, including the first Canadian IMAX 3 - D theatre in Montreal.