Stephen Low

Stephen Low (born 1950) is a Canadian film director and screenwriter who works extensively in the IMAX and IMAX 3D film formats. Based in Montreal, Quebec, over his 30-plus year career Low has directed numerous award-winning film documentaries including Challenger: An Industrial Romance (1980), Beavers (1988), Titanica (1991), Super Speedway (1997), Volcanoes of the Deep Sea (2003), Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag (2004), Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3D (2010), Legends of Flight 3D (2010), Rescue 3D (2011), Rocky Mountain Express (2011) and Aircraft Carrier (2017). The second son of National Film Board of Canada animator, documentary and IMAX filmmaker Colin Low, his eldest brother is Benjamin and his younger brother is Alexander, Stephen Low was born in Ottawa and raised in Montreal. In his youth he showed no interest in the family business although his varied interests — painting, photography, auto racing, aviation, scuba diving, trains, travel, history — would all eventually show up in his future films. "As a child," he recalls, "filmmaking seemed like extremely boring stuff. Everything just took forever." He moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario, where he studied political science at Lakehead University and also worked as a brakeman for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Despite his childhood resistance to filmmaking, he began his directorial career with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) around 1979 after four years spent in Newfoundland as a cameraman and editor. A brief dalliance with Hollywood filmmaking convinced him to stick with documentaries: "Hollywood plays with toys," he says, "they never get close to the real thing." Among his projects as a director at the NFB were Challenger: An Industrial Romance (1980), produced by Imax co-founder Roman Kroitor, and Next Generation (1982) (both films are about the Challenger aircraft), and The Defender (1988). He wrote a short film, Acting Classes (1980), directed by John N. Smith. He was hired by Kroitor to direct Skyward, his first IMAX film, which was released in 1985. Since then, Low has worked exclusively in IMAX and IMAX 3D. His diverse giant screen filmography reflects his fascination with the world at large as well as his ability to find an off-beat, interesting story in any subject. He says that, in fact, the most important thing he learned from his father had nothing to do with filmmaking techniques; it was "a fascination with everything. There are a lot of things out there that are really interesting and through filmmaking I could participate in them."