MOUNTAIN GORILLA
THE MAKING OF THE IMAX FILM

by Adrian Warren (Director)

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

We had been working up in the forest near Karisoke with George and Kay Schaller and had just finished a complicated sequence involving a cable rig which we had designed and built to move the camera aerially between the trees.

Adrian Warren and Neil Rettig on IMAX Cable car rig in forest

We knew there was fighting further to the east with groups of rebels carrying out hit and run raids across the border from Uganda, since we would occasionally hear distant busts of gunfire, but we hoped that our area, being remote, would remain unaffected. But when a group of rebels headed in our direction, the Rwandese military ordered us off the mountain (for our own safety) and the following morning we found ourselves in a battle which lasted all day, while we lay on the floor of our little house in Ruhengeri helplessly listening to the fighting outside. That was the end of the filming - we were evacuated, never to return. I was worried because there were still sequences that I had wanted to film - more with George Schaller, and some aerials of the forest and volcanoes. But when we took the film into the editing room, we found we just couldn't get enough of the gorilla behaviour - their appeal was so strong that sequences involving human beings seemed obtrusive. So we didn't seem to need the sequences that the war prevented us from achieving. The gorillas speak for themselves - their individual personalities, their intelligence, and curiosity come across on the big screen, as does the fragility of their future.

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

Adrian Warren, 30 October1992.