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.
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