“˜Biggest’ film fest shoots to expand IMAX audience

Wherever movie theaters are too small and the big screen just
needs to get bigger, IMAX will try to be there.

The Large Format Cinema Association is presenting its first IMAX
film festival now through March 7 at the The Bridge Cinemas in the
Howard Hughes Center. The festival, dubbed the Biggest Film
Festival in the World, features 10 recent IMAX films and hopes to
offer moviegoers a unique experience not presented at most film
festivals.

“A lot of the IMAX movies that show in Los Angeles are the
studio films like “˜The Matrix’ or “˜Star
Wars,'” said Andy Gellis, festival organizer and
producer of two of the featured films. “Los Angeles has
played very little of the classic IMAX films, and we want to give a
wide audience the chance to catch up on them.”

The films shown present a wide range of topics predicted to
please all sorts of avid moviegoers. The varied lineup spans from
“Extreme,” a film focusing on extreme sports athletes,
to “Fires of Kuwait,” a documentary on the
international firefighting effort in Kuwait following the first
Gulf War.

“The visual images are the best images you can see in
film,” said Gellis. “You can see it in a way you
couldn’t in standard 35mm film. We wanted a level that has a
wide range of diversity in the films selected.”

Bob Talbot, director of “Ocean Man,” one of the
featured films, feels IMAX allows him to fully immerse his audience
into the world of freediving.

“I wanted to make the audience feel as if they were
underwater with the incredible divers,” said Talbot.
“With an IMAX film, you put the audience into the
environment.”

The IMAX festival also marks the Los Angeles premiere of
“Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey,” a new film from the popular
off-Broadway show “Stomp,” as well as “The Young
Black Stallion,” Disney’s first dramatic movie made
especially for IMAX. Gellis hopes this film will show there is room
in Hollywood for IMAX feature films.

“There is certainly potential for major studios to release
feature-length films specifically for IMAX,” said Gellis.

With IMAX having been around for some time now, audiences are
beginning to see IMAX films in greater numbers. Still, there seems
to be only a small group of people really familiar with IMAX and
the films it produces.

“This festival is really a great opportunity to get people
fired up about IMAX films,” said Talbot. “There are
some very cool films being shown.”

The festival’s ultimate goal is to spread the word about
IMAX and get people to see the effectiveness of this format for
showing large-scale visual images bigger than standard film’s
capabilities.

“(IMAX films) really pay attention to story and to the
environment and are supposed to get people involved in the
experience of the storyteller,” said Gellis. “I hope
that (the festival) gets the message to the public that there is
incredible stuff to see.”

The IMAX Film Festival runs through March 7 at The Bridge:
Cinema De Lux at the Howard Hughes Center. For more information log
on to www.thebridgecinema.com.