Cinema 180(1974–Present)

In the 1960s, American businessman Fred Hollingsworth III was a supplier of fun houses, glass houses, and dark rides to carnivals through his company, ADCO. He had seen Journey to the Stars in Cinerama 360 (10-perforation 70mm at 18 fps) at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, WA, and multi-projector panoramic film systems at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. In 1974 he founded Omnivision, Inc. –  later renamed Omni Films International (OFI) – and worked with lens specialist Milt Laikin and cinematographer Joe Shelton to develop Cinema 180 (Otis, 2023).

Intended primarily for amusement parks and theme parks, Cinema 180 theaters consisted of a quarter-sphere dome screen onto which 70mm film, with a 5-perforation-tall frame, was projected through a fisheye lens. The projected image filled the screen from floor to zenith, and 180 degrees horizontally –  hence Cinema 180. The company claimed 175 installations at the format’s peak in the early 1990s; by contrast, IMAX Corporation, with its larger and more expensive proprietary system, didn’t reach that number of screens until the year 2000.

Most Cinema 180 theaters had no seating – audiences stood for the 10–13-minute duration of the films, which featured point-of-view scenes of roller coasters, race cars, and other thrill rides. The capacity ranged between 285 and 575 people, depending on screen size, or about one-third of those numbers if seating was installed. Three shows per hour allowed for loading and unloading the theater and rewinding the print, yielding a throughput of up to 2,000 people per hour in the largest theaters (OFI, 1987).

The Cinema 180 experience was unique and compelling. Thomas Hauerslev, a Danish film historian specializing in 70mm formats, describes it thus:

the most honest “First-Person” thrill-ride you could imagine on 70mm film. Roller coasters, fire trucks, speed boats, motorcycles and airplanes: mount a 65mm camera, very low and in the front, and then go as fast as you can. Fly through deep narrow canyons, speed through narrow streets, ride trains on high mountain rails, or drive on an expressway at high speed. Photograph it with short focal lenses, to exaggerate the speed and perspective, and the illusion of reality will put the audience “in the picture”. (Hauerslev, 2021; emphasis in the original). 

Hauerslev adds that at the Cinema 180 theater in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, “it was not uncommon to see people fall during performances.” After a few drinks, visitors “could easily become overwhelmed by the large image and lose their balance. They simply became dizzy from the spectacular action on the domed screen.” (Hauerslev, 2021)

Some operators installed railings to give patrons something to hold onto while watching, to prevent this. 

As Hauerslev says, Cinema 180 films made by OFI were mostly montages of point-of-view scenes that featured a dynamically moving camera. Some films had a unifying theme, but few had a narrative storyline. This description of Colossus is typical:

Drive a runaway “boss truck” into a head-on collision. Scream aboard the world’s fastest twin coaster. Fly your fighter jet upside down just a few feet above the desert floor. Gasp over 300-foot-high Virginia Falls and Canada’s scenic Far North. Soar over glistening Acapulco in an uplifting parakite ride. Feel what it’s like to fall from a 20-story skyscraper and dive 100 feet with world renowned cliff divers. Careen through the narrow streets of a Mexican village to a bone crushing crash ending. (OFI, 1990)

Between 1979 and 1990, OFI produced 15 short films that they distributed exclusively to Cinema 180 theater clients. German production company Cinevision also produced two short films in the early 1990s. (Hauerslev, 2021) 

Between 1981 and 1984, independent producers shot three longer (25–40 minutes) documentaries in the format, intended for Cinema 180 theaters with seats. Short-form documentaries of this type were standard fare in IMAX and other giant-screen theaters, but the dramatically different aspect ratios meant that films made for IMAX (1.43:1) could not be cross-printed and shown in Cinema 180 theaters (2.20:1), or vice versa.

OFI was one of the first companies to offer motion simulation experiences, introducing Motion Master moving theater seats in 1987. Some Cinema 180 theaters were retrofitted for Motion Master, and some Cinema 180 films were shot for them at 30 fps.

OFI developed several other theater systems using 8-perforation 70mm film: Dimension 360 (8/70 on a level dome); Omnivision (8/70 on a tilted dome); Magnavision (8/70 on a flat screen); and ESI 3D (wide-screen over/under 3D format on 8/70). 

In 1994, Iwerks Entertainment acquired OFI in a $17 million deal, taking over its film library and assuming support for dozens of theater clients. (Hauerslev, 2021) By 2000, the number of Cinema 180 installations Iwerks was supporting was down to 32. (Iwerks, 2000) The last permanent Cinema 180 theater, at Rainbow’s End theme park in Auckland, New Zealand, closed in 2015. (Hauerslev, 2021)

In 2023, an enthusiast in the Czech Republic acquired and painstakingly restored a vintage portable Cinema 180 system and began offering screenings of several classic Cinema 180 films at the Varnsdorf Panorama Weekend film festival in the spring of 2024. As of this writing (early 2025), they were continuing their pop-up operations in Prague. (CinemaPanoramic, 2025)