Roman Kroitor


Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as an early practitioner of cinéma vérité, as co-founder of IMAX, and as creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic animation system. He was also the original inspiration for the Force, popularized in the Star Wars series.
He studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Manitoba and then worked for the National Film Board of Canada, first as a production assistant and then as a film editor. He directed his first film, Rescue Party in 1949. He wrote the NFB animated short It's A Crime, produced Propaganda Message, and produced and directed In the Labyrinth, released as a theatrical film in 1979. On September 17, 2012, he died of a heart attack at the age of 85.

Early influence of the cinéma vérité style

Between 1958 and 1961 Kroitor co-directed, with Wolf Koenig, the Candid Eye direct cinema documentary series for the National Film Board. One of those films became the highly influential cinéma vérité-style documentary about singer Paul Anka: Lonely Boy. This film's use of portable film and sound gear, with lack of a voice over narration, would influence later documentaries like D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Bob Dylan feature Dont Look Back and even more closely the Peter Watkins 1967 film Privilege. Lonely Boy was one of the earliest examples of a rockumentary and was parodied in the comedy This Is Spinal Tap.
Other notable films Kroitor directed or co-directed in the cinema verite style included Glenn Gould: On the Record, Glenn Gould:Off the Record, Stravinsky, among many others.

Founder of IMAX

Kroitor exhibited a large-scale multi-screen work, Labyrinth, at Expo 67 in Montreal. In the same year he co-founded the Multiscreen Corporation, which later became the IMAX Corporation. The Multivision process, which was a response to Kroitor's experiences at Expo 67, was developed for the Osaka Expo '70 and involved 70mm film projected horizontally rather than vertically. Each frame was as large as a postcard, with 15 sprocket-holes.
He produced the first IMAX film, Tiger Child, in 1970, and in 1990 he co-directed the first IMAX feature film, Rolling Stones: At the Max. He also produced the first IMAX stereoscopic film, We Are Born of Stars, anaglyph, 1985, and co-produced the first full-color OMNIMAX S3D film, Echoes of the Sun, alternate-eye, 1990.

Creator of hand-drawn stereoscopic animation

While working to create traditional and early CG films in a stereoscopic format, Kroitor became frustrated due to the lack of direct interaction between the desires of the artists and the results on film, because at the time everything had to pass through the mathematicians and programmers. He conceived of SANDDE as a way to allow the artists to directly draw, in full stereoscopic 3D, what they wanted the audience to see.

Originator of "The Force"

Roman Kroitor was credited by George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, as being the origin of the concept of the Force, an important thematic element tying together all the Star Wars films. "One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop IMAX. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: 'Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God.'"
"When asked if this was the source of 'the Force,' Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was 'an echo of that phrase in 21-87.'"

Awards