Graeme Ferguson, a Canadian documentary filmmaker who helped create Imax, the panoramic cinematic experience that immerses audiences in movies, and who was the company’s primary creative force for years, died on May 8th at his home in Lake of Bays, Ontario. He was 91.
His son Munro Ferguson said the cause was cancer.
In the 1960s, Mr Ferguson made a name for himself as a young cameraman known for his cinéma verite-style work when he was asked to make a documentary on the Arctic and Antarctic for the world exhibition Expo 67 in Montreal. He traveled for a year to make the film, which included footage about Inuit life and the aurora borealis.
The documentary “Polar Life” was shown in an immersive theater configuration: the audience sat on a rotating turntable while the film was played on a panorama of 11 fixed screens. The experience was a hit. Another film at Expo 67 that similarly used multiple canvases, “In the Labyrinth”, was directed by Roman Kroitor, Mr. Ferguson’s brother-in-law. Soon the two men had a vision.
“We were wondering if it would not be better to have a single large format projector or to have one that fills a large screen?” Mr. Ferguson told Take One, a Canadian film magazine, in 1997. “The next step, of course, was to have a large film format, larger than anything that has ever been done before.”
“We said, ‘Let’s invent this new medium.'”
But despite Imax’s formidable technology, Mr. Ferguson struggled for decades to convince investors to embrace his vision. In a history of innovation, setbacks and adversity, his company almost went under several times, and it took Imax years to fully realize the cinematic wonder of its day.
“People kept telling us that nobody would sit still for 90 minutes and watch an Imax movie,” Ferguson told Take One. “We have been told endlessly.”
Mr. Ferguson had already asked Robert Kerr, a former high school buddy who had become a successful businessman, to become their partner, and next he hired William Shaw, another former high school buddy, to become an engineer was to develop Imax technology. They soon developed prototypes for the camera and large format projector that were needed for filming and showing Imax films.
The group was eager to showcase their technology at the 1970 Osaka Expo in Japan, so they reached out to Japanese bank Fuji for funding. They showed a delegation of bank officials their Imax offices in New York and Montreal, both of which were filled with hardworking employees. Impressed by what they saw, Fuji Bank agreed to the project.
What the delegates did not know was that the New York office was Mr. Ferguson’s freelance studio and that the Montreal headquarters were production facilities that Mr. Kroitor had rented a few days earlier.
The first Imax film, “Tiger Child”, premiered shortly afterwards at Expo 70 in Osaka. Although the film was successful, the company continued to struggle with funding.
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Back in Toronto, Mr. Ferguson learned that a new amusement park called Ontario Place was planning to build a large-screen theater. He reached out to the team and they agreed to buy an Imax projector. In 1971, Ontario Place began broadcasting North of Superior, an Imax documentary directed by Mr. Ferguson about the wilderness of northern Ontario. The venue became Imax’s first permanent theater and the model for future Imax cinemas.
In the 1970s, Imax transported viewers into unexpected realms: “Circus World” was a documentary about the Ringling Brothers and the Barnum & Bailey Circus; “To fly!” recorded the wonders of flight; and “Ocean” was about marine life.
In the 1980s, Mr. Ferguson approached NASA with the idea of getting moviegoers into space by training astronauts to use Imax cameras on spaceships. The collaboration resulted in several successful documentaries that established the Imax brand.
Mr. Ferguson and his co-founders sold the company in 1994 when they were over 60 to two American businessmen, Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler, who leveraged Imax and brought the brand to the public. In the Take One interview, Mr. Ferguson admitted that he was surprised at how difficult it was to find a buyer despite the company’s established success.
“The reaction time to new things is always longer than the inventor can ever imagine,” he says. “You think you might have built the better mousetrap and the world will be at your door the next morning, but they will be at your door about five years later. This is how the world really works. “
Mr. Ferguson remained connected to the company after the sale and worked as a consultant and producer of films such as “L5: First City in Space” (1996), “Hubble 3-D” (2010) and “A Beautiful Planet” (2016) which was narrated by Jennifer Lawrence.
Ivan Graeme Ferguson was born on October 7, 1929 in Toronto and grew up in nearby Galt. His father Frank was an English teacher. His mother, Grace (Warner) Ferguson, was an elementary school teacher. When he was 7 years old, his parents gave him a brownie camera that he used to photograph steamboats on Lake Rosseau, about 120 miles north of Toronto.
In 1948 he enrolled at the University of Toronto to study politics and economics. Avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren taught a workshop at the university for a semester, and he became her lighting assistant. She encouraged him to give up the economy and make films instead.
In the 1960s, Mr. Ferguson was a cameraman in New York, working with filmmakers from the Cinéma Vérité movement such as DA Pennebaker and Albert Maysles. He worked for Adolfas Mekas and made footage for an Oscar-nominated documentary called “Rooftops of New York” (1961).
His marriage to Betty Ramsaur in 1959 ended in divorce in 1974. In 1982 he married Phyllis Wilson, a filmmaker who became his creative collaborator and produced several Imax films with him. She died in March at the age of 70.
In addition to his son from his first marriage, Mr. Ferguson has a daughter, Allison, also from his first marriage; two sisters, Janet Kroitor and Mary Hooper; a brother, Bill; four grandchildren; and a great grandson.
In his late 60s, Mr. Ferguson and his wife settled in a sprawling stone house on the Lake of Bays that he bought after the Imax sale. Mr. Kerr and Mr. Shaw also lived in lakeside houses about 140 miles north of Toronto, and the men often worked together on their boats. After Mr. Kroitor’s death in 2012, Mr. Ferguson became the last living Imax founder.
During the pandemic, Mr Ferguson read dismal reports on the state of Hollywood and changing viewing habits, with streaming videos drawing audiences out of theaters. But he wasn’t worried about Imax’s fate.
“He was absolutely convinced that it would thrive even if the rest of the exhibition industry was much worse off,” said his son Munro, “because he believed that if you left your house you could be just as good. “Look at something amazing.”
