MOUNTAIN GORILLA
THE MAKING OF THE IMAX FILM

by Adrian Warren (Director)

Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla g. beringei), Virunga Volcanoes, Rwanda

Today there are only a few hundred Mountain Gorillas left. Under normal circumstances their situation has been fragile, but in the last two years, due to the war in Rwanda, the instability and hostilities made their situation critical. When we began our IMAX film we had chosen to work with group 13, whose silverback leader "Mrithi" was to be tragically killed by military gunfire, and the Susa group, the largest known group of Mountain Gorillas at that time under the leadership of Imbaraga, another extremely tolerant and charismatic silverback with whom we had worked previously on our BBC film "Gorillas in the Midst of Man". His group of over thirty gorillas included many juveniles which we hoped would give us good possibilities for filming play behaviour.

Imagine our shock and distress when, on arriving to begin the first six weeks filming for IMAX, we found Imbaraga with a serious chest infection, and within four days this all-powerful male was dead. Such is the personality of these gorillas that his body, when brought down from the mountain seemed only half the size that he had been in life. Following Imbaraga's death, a subdominant male silverback, Umogome, took over leadership. But he was (as he looks in his photograph) not the calm leader that Imbaraga was, he was always a little edgy when we were present and his leadership quickly became challenged by a younger male -a drama thatunfolds itself in the IMAX film.

The death of Imbaraga was possibly due to disease transmission from a human visitor, and underlined the importance of keeping our distance from the gorillas - where possible a minimum of five metres, and we were always very strict about our own health when visiting the gorillas. Inevitably, keeping a respectable distance was not always possible - working with them day after day, their initial curiosity gave way to a trusting relationship and the juveniles, in particular, accepted us as part of their environment. But whenever we approached the group, we always walked quietly, softly, often crawling through the vegetation on our hands and knees making our own interpretation of gorilla calming sounds when we were very close.