B.C.sa国际传媒檚 coastal rainforest and its unique creatures are featured in an IMAX documentary film opening this week in Victoria and around North America.
Great Bear Rainforest, Land of the Spirit Bear is narrated by Vancouver actor Ryan Reynolds, and features the camera work of Ian McAllister, co-founder of environmental society Pacific Wild.
It has its red carpet premiere at the Royal B.C. Museum IMAX theatre in Victoria on Wednesday, on Friday, Feb. 15. It also begins its international theatre tour Feb. 15 in Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and other giant-screen venues around the continent.
The is an ambitious entertainment and educational project, produced with the support of Kyle Washington, a Vancouver resident and executive chairman of Seaspan Corp. In an interview with Black Press, Washington said McAllister was pitching him to support sa国际传媒檚 work in the remote Central Coast area, and the documentary project came out of that.
sa国际传媒淚 grew up wanting to be a marine biologist,sa国际传媒� Washington said with a laugh. sa国际传媒淭his is just an expensive way to do it.sa国际传媒�
The film comes with a classroom educational guide and is designed as a field trip for students around the world to get a vivid look at the wilderness teeming with whales, wolves, bears and marine life.
sa国际传媒淭he film is really a big-fish-eat-little-fish story,sa国际传媒� Washington said. sa国际传媒淚t starts in the spring with the herring coming in. It changes the whole ocean. Through the film you start with those little tiny things and end up getting into the wolves and the bears.sa国际传媒�
Choosing a narrator for a wildlife documentary is sa国际传媒渕ission critical,sa国际传媒� Washington said, and he was looking for a younger voice.
sa国际传媒淩yan, hesa国际传媒檚 so witty, hesa国际传媒檚 a good Vancouver boy, and when we reached out and told him about it, he took us up on it,sa国际传媒� Washington said. sa国际传媒淲e met him in New York. What a professional.sa国际传媒�
The run time of the film is under 50 minutes, which was required by IMAX so it would qualify for an Academy Award nomination.
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As the movie was preparing to launch, the B.C. education ministry launched its , sponsored by the Great Bear Rainforest Education and Awareness Trust.
The region, which spans 64,000 square kilometres of the B.C. Central Coast, was subject to a unique protection area worked out with 26 Indigenous communities that put 85 per cent of the territory off limits to commercial logging.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited the Heiltsuk village of Bella Bella in the heart of the region as part of their B.C. tour in 2016, where Prince William announced that the Great Bear Rainforest was being included in the Queensa国际传媒檚 Commonwealth Canopy Initiative to promote forest preservation.
tfletcher@blackpress.ca
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