While working on concepts for what would become the Labyrinth pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Canadian filmmaker Roman Kroitor proposed simulating the experience of flying by building a theater with a screen under a transparent floor. Fellow filmmaker Graeme Ferguson recalls that, in 1964, he “visited the hangar at an aircraft factory where [Kroitor and filmmaker Colin Low] were carrying out the early experiments. They invited me to walk out on a very large sheet of plate glass, which turned into a magic carpet. As the lights went down, the carpet lifted off and soared above the skyscrapers of Montreal. I had nothing to hold on to, so the effect was, to put it mildly, alarming. Roman soon discovered that flying on a magic carpet made some people airsick, so they modified the design.” (Ferguson, 2016)

Ultimately, Kroitor’s design for Labyrinth put a large screen on the floor and another on a wall at the end of a long, deep room, surrounded by balconies on which the audience stood to view films projected on both screens. Following the Expo, Kroitor and Ferguson formed IMAX Corporation with business partner Robert Kerr.

By the late 1980s, World’s Fairs and theme parks had become a significant part of IMAX’s business, which gave Kroitor the opportunity to fully realize his Magic Carpet concept. Expo ’90 was held in Osaka, Japan, from April 1 to September 30, 1990, attracting more than 23 million visitors. IMAX provided no fewer than four theaters for the fair, each with a different configuration, with two using technology never seen before. (See IMAX 3D and IMAX Solido)

The IMAX Magic Carpet theater was built in the pavilion sponsored by Sanwa Midori-Kai, an Osaka-based banking conglomerate that also funded the US$3 million film for the theater (Konowal, 2022). Seating 294, its upper screen was 18.9 x 25m (62 x 82 ft) and the lower screen was 18.2 x 27.7m (59.7 x 90.9 ft). (IMAX, 1992) Six-channel analog audio was played back by speakers throughout the house.

In keeping with the theme of the Expo, “The Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind”, the Magic Carpet showed Flowers in the Sky, a 15-minute film about the migration of the monarch butterfly, produced by Kroitor and Charles Konowal, and directed by Michael Scott.

Shooting the film required a massive aerial rig to hold the two IMAX 15/65 cameras in positions corresponding to the orientation of the theater’s screens. In keeping with the “surprise reveal” tradition of such previous films as This is Cinerama (1955), North of Superior (1971) and To Fly (1976), Flowers in the Sky opened with the lower screen dark and a macro sequence of butterflies emerging from their cocoons on the upper screen. As the butterflies start to fly, the lower screen lit up with a POV shot of flying over the landscape, to create Kroitor’s dramatic “Magic Carpet” effect (Konowal, 2022).

Flowers in the Sky was one of the three most popular attractions at Expo ’90. The top two were also IMAX theaters (see IMAX Solido and IMAX 3D) (Konowal, 2022).

The Magic Carpet theater was demolished shortly after the Expo, along with nearly all other structures built for the fair.

In 1992, Parc du Futuroscope, France’s theme park of moving images, opened the first and only permanent Magic Carpet theater (Tapis Magique in French) and began showing Flowers in the Sky. It ran there continuously until 2003.

Futuroscope had opened near Poitiers in 1987. Its first attraction was Kinemax, an IMAX (2D) theater, and it subsequently added a theater featuring Douglas Trumbull’s Showscan system (5-perf 70mm at 60 fps) in 1988, and venues with IMAX Dome (1990), IMAX Solido (1993), IMAX 3D (1996), and IMAX Ridefilm (2000) – all in buildings with strikingly unique architecture.

In 2003, the park commissioned a new Magic Carpet film, Voyageurs du ciel et de la mer (Travelers of Sky and Sea). The 16-minute film was produced by Galatée Films and directed by Jacques Cluzaud and Jacques Perrin. Much of the film was shot with a two-camera rig. But when the filmmakers wanted the action to move from the bottom screen to the top screen, or vice versa, they used a single 15/65 camera, turned 90 degrees (i.e., portrait mode), and separated each frame into two 7.5-perf frames that were blown up to two 15/65 internegatives (Hyder, 2004). Voyageurs opened in 2004 and ran until the theater was closed in late 2014. In 2016, the building was repurposed to house a motion-simulation ride.