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TITANICA
OPENS SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2012
(THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC)
IMAX Film Sheds New Light On The Legendary Shipwreck
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s Omni IMAX Theater will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic with the return of Titanica to the giant screen, opening Sunday, April 15, 2012. Titanica takes audiences on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure of discovery to the site of the world's most famous shipwreck. The 40-minute film was shot during the expedition of the Akademik Keldysh to the North Atlantic by award-winning filmmaker Stephen Low.
The Omni Theater’s offering of the classic film, originally released in 1995, is in advance celebration of the Museum of Science and History’s presentation of Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, opening October 13, 2012.
In its day, the R.M.S. Titanic, the largest and most luxurious liner ever built, was described as unsinkable. On April l5, l9l2, on its maiden voyage, it collided with an iceberg and sank; l,502 people lost their lives.
Nearly 80 years later, in the summer of l99l, a high-risk Canadian-American-Russian expedition set out to explore the shipwreck and to conduct important scientific research. Director Low weaves a dramatic story of this modern-day expedition and the legendary Titanic, the symbol of an era. Startling, eerie images of the Titanic as she now lies on the ocean floor are contrasted with the exquisitely-preserved archival photographs of the ship in all its splendor, taken in 1912. Juxtaposed to these images are the touching and eloquent comments of Eva Hart who, as a seven-year-old girl, survived that tragic night but lost her father.
Audiences can see the ghostly wreck in extraordinary detail. The expedition made l7 dives in two state-of-the-art submersibles, Mir I and Mir II. They worked off the largest research vessel in the world, Russia's Akademik Keldysh. Using specially-designed HMI underwater lights, the most powerful ever used under water, the expedition was able to see very large expanses of the wreck. Were it not for these lights, Titanica would not have been possible.
A team of scientists who participated in the expedition used the Titanic as a time gauge to measure environmental processes active in the deep sea. The sea at that depth is not the inert, passive void it is generally perceived to be. Active currents indicate that the sea bottom is not the place to dump the world's waste. Twenty-eight species of animals and four species of fish inhabit the wreck. The expedition and the film footage provided scientists with invaluable data.
Filming the Titanic in the giant screen format had been Low's dream since its discovery in l985. Then he had hoped to put an IMAX camera on the wreck during the French-U.S. expedition in 1986. Underwater expert Dr. Joseph MacInnis, who studies human performance in high-risk environments, had similar thoughts while diving on the second Titanic expedition in l987. MacInnis had developed a friendly relationship with Dr. Anatoly Sagalevitch, Head of Manned Submersibles at the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, which would make a new expedition possible.
Titanica was directed by Stephen Low, and produced by Low and Pietro Serapiglia. Executive producers were André Picard and Dr. Joseph MacInnis. It was made possible with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Export Development Corporation, Zurich Canada, Motion Picture Guarantors Ltd., Ontario Place, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and Undersea Imaging International Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of IMAX Corporation.
Titanica will show through summer 2012. Tickets for Titanica are $7 for adults; $6 for children (2-12) and seniors (60+); Museum members receive a $3 discount. Tickets will be available beginning in March 2012.
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