ATHENS, Greece — Trip to ancient Greece is an improvement on the typical crusty Imax documentary.

Greece: Secrets of the Past is a cannily conceived big-screen experience.

For a host of reasons, not least of which the expense of their production and limited exhibition opportunities, films made in the big-screen Imax format are invariably crusty documentaries invested with educational values.

Rather than the typical Imax-film destination – Egyptian mummies, Mount Everest, space exploration – veteran big-screen director and producer Greg MacGillivray travels back to ancient Greece, to the volcanic eruption that buried Santorini and the golden age of Greek civilisation, in his latest venture.

Part history lesson, part travelogue, part proclamation of Greek pride, this is a cannily conceived big-screen experience, complete with postcard-perfect vistas of Santorini and the Mediterranean, and pulse-quickening volcanic eruption.

The story’s coathanger is the avuncular Christos Doumas, an archaeological detective and guide to the mystery of Santorini – the town Akrotiri was buried beneath volcanic ash, yet unlike Pompeii no human remains have been uncovered.

Though the link between the events of Santorini and the birth of Greek civilisation some 1000 years later is at best flimsy, at worst gratuitous, the second half of the film takes us into the money shot – a recreation of the Parthenon as it might have looked, complete with its statue of Athena and bold frieze.

As history lesson, Greece: Secrets of the Past, offers as much depth and insight as something you might read on a breakfast cereal box with its cribbed recitations about the invention of democracy and philosophy.

It fares infinitely better as spectacle. And if it inspires other Imax film-makers to steer clear of the old chalk-and-talk methods and subjects, that might not be a bad thing.

Paul Kalina, Reviewer

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