Expo 67’s Polar Life Installation at La Cinémathèque Québecoise

TOMORROW at 5PM: Come out to the vernissage for Polar Life, a multi-screen film installation at La Cinémathèque Québecoise curated by Monika Kin Gagnon, co-editor of the forthcoming release, Reimagining Cinema: Film at Expo 67.

The installation, on display from October 9 – November 2, is a digital recreation of the original film by IMAX-inventer, Graeme Ferguson, which was showcased at Expo 67’s sprawling “Man the Explorer” Pavilion on Ile St-Hélène.

From the CINEMAexpo67 website:

The immersive digital projection installation recreates the pioneering audio-visual experience of the multi-screen film, Polar Life. Using advanced digital technology and a 90-degree curved screen representing 25% of the original circular screens, and three high-definition digital projectors (with edge-blending and warp to create a seamless single image), the digitally-restored film images move across eleven virtual screens that pan horizontally across the physical screen, simulating the visual experience that audiences had sitting in Polar Life’s rotating theatre back in 1967.

The recreation of Polar Life is a partnership between CINEMAexpo67, a research team of scholars and artists from Concordia and York Universities, La Cinémathèque Québecoise, and the NFB. Event info >

REIMAGINING CINEMA, edited by Gagnon and Janine Marchessault, explores the innovations that film and media artists offered Expo 67 audiences and presents extensive visual material to reconstruct the viewer’s experience.

The contributors focus on eight screen experiments, including the original Polar Life installation, employing innovative methodologies to reveal the intricacies and processes of production, while including factual descriptions, interpretive essays, interviews, and image dossiers. The book reflects how the Expo 67 film-events were encountered as creative experimentations that resonated with broader 1960s arts and culture, and as institutional collaborations with artists.

More displays of photographic, cinematic, and telematic technology were experienced at Expo 67 than in any other previous world exposition. Reimagining Cinema captures the complexity and imaginative fervour of this exciting period in film history.

**The REIMAGINING CINEMA book launch is on November 1st at La Cinémathèque Québecoise. Followed by a special screening and discussion with Graeme Ferguson and the editors.**

For media requests, please contact Jacqui Davis.