Museum PR Announcements News and Information

Land of the Spirit Bear film at Cincinnati Museum Center

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) is taking audiences to one of the world’s most exquisite and secluded wildernesses in a new OMNIMAX® adventure. Great Bear Rainforest: Land of the Spirit Bear, narrated by Ryan Reynolds, explores Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest on a dazzling journey through verdant forests, salmon river valleys and the ice-capped peaks of the Coast Mountains. Along the way you’ll explore the land of grizzlies, coastal wolves, sea otters and humpback whales as you discover the secret world of the Spirit Bear. Great Bear Rainforest opens April 8.

Hidden from the outside world, the Great Bear Rainforest is a sanctuary to a stunning diversity of wildlife, including the fabled all-white bear – the rarest bear on Earth – called Moksgm’ol, or Spirit Bear, by the First Nations people who have provided stewardship of the forests for millennia. The rainforest is the largest temperate coastal rainforest in the world, covering 6.4 million hectares – roughly the size of Ireland – and has remained relatively unchanged for more than 10,000 years.

“Great Bear Rainforest is an intimate story of nature and humanity that celebrates the sanctity of nature and the First Nations people who live in harmony with and protect their wild home,” says Dave Duszynski, president of Mercury Museum Services, a subsidiary of Cincinnati Museum Center. “The film is a stunning spectacle that will immerse audiences in the rugged beauty of the Great Bear Rainforest and its wild inhabitants.”

Director Ian McAllister and his crew spent three years filming throughout the remote reaches of the Great Bear Rainforest. Their unprecedented footage of the unspoiled, unsung wilderness of Canada’s primordial rainforest provide an experiential taste of a magnificent place where ocean, forest, mountain and river meet in a mighty convergence. Great Bear Rainforest celebrates a place that could only have thrived – and will only continue to thrive – through sustained coexistence between humans, land and sea animals and the natural environment.

“The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the last truly wild places left on Earth, and has immense value both ecologically and culturally,” says McAllister. “Many people don’t know about this ancient rainforest and the indigenous people who have helped protect it for thousands of years, and we hope audiences will leave theaters inspired that an extraordinary world of such natural wonder and splendor still exists.”

Narrated by Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, Great Bear Rainforest is the first time this pristine, wildlife-rich world will be experienced in OMNIMAX® theaters. The film features music composed and arranged by legendary Academy Award®-winning composer Hans Zimmer and Anže Rozman for Bleeding Fingers Music. The film is accompanied by a companion book, Great Bear Rainforest: A Giant Screen Adventure in the Land of the Spirit Bear, written by Ian McAllister and Alex Van Tol for Orca Book Publishers.

Great Bear Rainforest: Land of the Spirit Bear is a family-friendly film and runs 40 minutes. The film opens in CMC’s Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX® Theater April 8. To purchase tickets or to learn more visit cincymuseum.org/great-bear-rainforest