The IMAX® Movie

The producers of the critically acclaimed 2001 IMAX-format film Journey Into Amazing Caves chose a Hidden Worlds Cenote as one of three global locations to film their story. (The other locations were in Greenland and Grand Canyon.)

The following information is provided by the producers of the film on their website:

IMAX® motion picture systems, invented and developed by Imax Corporation, display images of unsurpassed size, clarity and impact. The images are enhanced by a superb specially-designed six-channel, multi-speaker sound system and projected onto giant rectangular screens, up to eight stories high and, in the case of IMAX Dome® theatres, onto domes as large as 27metres (88'- 5") in diameter.

MacGillivray Freeman Films is the world’s most prolific independent producer of giant screen films. This Laguna Beach California company is creator of the top two box office hits for the giant screen industry: To Fly! (1976) and Everest (1998). The company also produced the popular The Living Sea, nominated for an Academy Award in 1995, and the box office success Dolphins (2000).

All over our planet there are landscapes that hold caves beneath them. Challenged by the underground frontier and inspired by the secrets it may yield, cavers share a passion for exploration. Journey into Amazing Caves follows Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach on an adventure to explore caves in canyon walls, in glaciers and beneath the rainforests of Mexico. In these unusual and hostile places, Barton, a microbiologist, searches for tiny organisms that somehow survive there. The microorganisms that live in environments with no light, few nutrients, and in the case of glaciers, locked in ice for hundreds or thousands of years, have developed unique survival tactics and lethal weapons against other organisms that compete for the same, few nutrients. Barton studies this subterranean life in hopes it may point to new drugs or antibiotics to fight human illness.

The underwater caves of Mexico’s Caribbean coast contain the beautiful formations found in typical, terrestrial caves. In the film, the water is so clear, you won’t know you’re underwater until you see Hazel in Scuba gear. Beneath the Mayan jungle, Hazel searches underwater cave passages for microorganisms living in the shimmering halocline: where the freshwater that flows beneath the jungle meets the ocean saltwater.

As it conveys the excitement of scientific exploration, Journey into Amazing Caves takes audiences on an adventure in the natural world…to the underground landscapes that are as beautiful and vital as any place on Earth.

For more details about the challenges of filming and other background information along with information on ordering DVD versions of the film and IMAX locations, visit the official website: www.amazingcaves.com.