T
he Canadian film industry lost a pioneer with the death of filmmaker and IMAX co-inventor Roman Kroitor on Sept. 16. Born on December 12, 1926, in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Kroitor produced dozens of films with the National Film Board, including Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman, Nobody Waved Goodbye, the Candid Eye series, Giles Walker’s Bravery in the Field, and John N. Smith’s First Winter. His creative partnerships with Wolf Koenig and Colin Low resulted in some of the NFB’s most acclaimed documentaries of all time, such as Glenn Gould: On & Off the Record, Lonely Boy, Stravinsky and Universe. His collaboration on the ground-breaking multi-screen project In the Labyrinth for Expo 67 in Montreal set the stage for a new era in cinema. Co-directed by Kroitor with Colin Low and Hugh O’Connor, and co-produced with Tom Daly, In the Labyrinth was an immersive cinema experience that caused a sensation at the Montreal world’s fair during Canada’s centennial year. The presentation used 35 mm and 70 mm film projected simultaneously on multiple screens. That process led to the development of the single-projector giant-screen system that helped redefine the possibilities of cinema: the IMAX film system. Kroitor conceived the idea for the IMAX with cinematographer Graeme Ferguson csc in the autumn of 1967. Their goal was to create the world’s most sophisticated film-projection system. In an interview
6 • Canadian Cinematographer - november 2012
Courtesy of national Film Board of Canada.
In MeMoRIAM
Remembering Canadian Film Pioneer Roman Kroitor
in the December 2010 issue of Canadian Cinematographer, Ferguson explained that after Expo 67, he and Kroitor realized that there was an audience for large-format films. “It wasn’t just because it was multi-screen. It was because the screens were bigger; because we had more projectors to fill the screens,” Ferguson said. “I was at Roman’s house one afternoon, and he and I were discussing the fact this was a very successful but very cumbersome way to project films. We asked each other, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to have a single, large-format projector to fill a large screen? We talked for about an hour, and within that hour we had sketched out the screen size that could be used and the film format that would be capable of filling it. The idea of a horizontal 65 mm film format with 15- or 16-perf pull across was really worked out in the first few minutes. We said to ourselves, ‘Let’s invent this new medium.’” Kroitor went on to co-produce the first
IMAX film Tiger Child, which premiered at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. Ferguson also credits Kroitor with helping to change the way 3D was employed in film with Stephen Low’s 1990 film The Last Buffalo, which Kroitor co-produced with Sally Dundas. “For the first time ever, they showed that 3D could be an art form,” Ferguson says. “And the current 3D boom – which is exemplified by Avatar and some other very good 3D films – really was encouraged by Steve Low and Roman showing the way with that one film.” Reflecting on his partner, Ferguson recalls: “Roman was always interested in the future. He was always inventing things and picking up things that nobody had tried yet.” Kroitor is survived by his wife Janet and children Paul, Tanya, Lesia, Stephanie and Yvanna.
