A film without commentary in which multiple images, sometimes complementary, sometimes contrasting, draw the viewer through the different stages of a labyrinth. The tone of the film moves from great joy to wrenching sorrow; from stark simplicity to ceremonial pomp. It is life as it is lived by the people of the world, each one, as the film suggests, in a personal labyrinth.
In the Labyrinth was first released as a multi-screen presentation for Chamber III of the Labyrinth at Expo 67. These separate images were integrated into a single strand of film, using a "five-on-one" cinematic technique.
"Scenes for this giant-screen production were shot all over the world with five cameras running simultaneously on a cross-shaped mount. They were then projected on five separate screens in a similar cruciform arrangement. The technique required faultless synchronization among the cameras, the editing equipment and the projectors. The results promised to be spectacular: viewers would have never seen anything like it. More than a million people experienced the film In the Labyrinth / Dans le labyrinthe, shown in two parts in chambers I and III of the huge five-story pavilion (also called The Labyrinth) in Cité du Havre, near the main Expo site. While the other themed pavilions of the Man and His World portion of the fair showed the various means by which humanity had tamed its environment, The Labyrinth offered an interior voyage through which audiences discovered humanity’s conquest of itself." - A. Ohayon
Albert Ohayon
From the playlist: Expo 67: 50+ Years Later
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In the Labyrinth, Roman Kroitor, Colin Low & Hugh O'Connor, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
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