Krugovaya Kinopanorama

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The entrance to the circular building of the Krugovaya Kinopanorama on the grounds of the All-Russia Exhibition Centre.

The Krugovaya Kinopanorama or Circular Kinopanorama (Russian: Круговая кинопанорама) - is a cinema in Moscow of Russia which plays Krugorama, a type of cinema presentation in which film is projected on a circular screen with a horizontal 360° view. This was pioneered in 1896 by French engineer Raoul Grimoin-Sanson, who played ten projectors simultaneously on a circular screen, a process he called Cinéorama.^[1] Cinerama though spelled similarly has a different meaning, and denotes three projectors on an arched screen, as does Kinopanorama. The technology used in the Moscow Circular Kinopanorama was also previously carried out by Walt Disney in 1955, in a process he called Circarama.

[edit] Moscow Circular Kinopanorama

A view of the film projected on the screens of the Circular Kinopanorama.

On the site of the All-Russia Exhibition Centre in Moscow is a working example of the Circular Kinopanorama technology which bears the name Krygovaya Kinopanorama. It was built in 1959 and projects film from 11 synchroniously working cameras onto 11 screens arranged in a cylindrical brick and glass building.

Special systems of movie-cameras were needed for the exposure of this theatre's films. In the pursuit of these a number of complex technical problems were solved. For example, in 1959 the designers of the Yakovlev design bureau managed to develop a suspension device for shooting circular kinopanoramic films from a Yak-24 helicopter. Developing these cameras simultaneously solved the task of carriage of goods with minimal transfer of vibration.^[2]

Since 2006, after more than a ten year recess, the Krygovaya Kinopanorama is again opened to audiences. The repertoire of the theatre consists of films shot in the Soviet years.

[edit] References

^ Andrè Bazin (Translated by Alain Piette, Bert Cardullo), Bazin at Work: Major Essays & Reviews from the Forties and Fifties. Routledge: 1997. ISBN 0415900182
^ Уголок неба. Яковлев Як-24. 2004, Дата модификации: 20-09-2007. Accessed 20 September 2007.