`ALASKA' AN EXHILARATING RIDE THROUGH VITAL, PRISTINE TERRITORY.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Staff Writer

The same creative team that made the extremely popular IMAX film ``Africa: the Serengeti'' (which has drawn an estimated 15 million people worldwide) returns with ``Alaska,'' a really magnificent odyssey into that wild, incredibly vital Northern territory.

The team, including director George Casey and director of photography Rodney Taylor, spent 36 weeks on location and came back with 300,000 feet of exposed film. Culled to 40 minutes, it's an exhilarating ride through territory you probably never could see on your own, first-rate wildlife footage and enriching historical background.

The giant-screen format is at its best exploring vast, dramatic landscapes, and in this one, a helicopter rushes you over colored ice fields and glacier canyons as exotic and remote as anything you'll find this side of Jupiter.

The night skies provide a ballet of light as the arcs of the aurora borealis curl and flow above the snowfields.

There's natural drama and grandeur in the collapsing of giant icebergs into the sea (a phenomenon called ``white thunder''), and human drama in the story (told with 19th-century photos) of the 1897 Klondike gold rush, which drew about a quarter of a million fortune hunters to a territory they were ill-prepared to survive in (reportedly, about 400 struck it rich; thousands froze to death).

As Alaska's hostile winter subsides into summer, a miracle of rejuvenation begins, and much of the film is devoted to chronicling the teeming, abundant wildlife that flourishes in the brief benevolence of summer.

Brown bears, black bears, bald eagles, humpback whales, elk, moose, bison, musk oxen, sea lions, wolves, foxes, and sea birds - it's a pretty dazzling animal array, and the filmmakers offer one great rare sequence after another, of the animals in conflict, or foraging, fishing and doing what they do to survive.

The inspiring, mysterious journey of the salmon upriver to spawn gets a tragicomic ending, when you watch brown bears gathered to scoop the fish out of the river at the apex of their epic struggle. The kings of the frozen tundra, the polar bears, are perhaps the highlight of this zoological parade. We're told that they have black skin and fur that conducts solar heat to help keep them warm, and that they can smell their prey from a distance of 20 miles.

Though people tend to think of Alaska as a remote, peripheral part of the North American continent, writer Mose Richards provides the interesting perspective that it was natives of Siberia, sweeping eastward through Alaska when the continents were joined, who wound up populating much of North America and even Central and South America.

The focus is mostly on the wild side of Alaska, but the movie also has brief footage of the present-day native peoples of Alaska, engaged in whaling and in running the Iditerod, the 1,000-mile dog sled race.

Tightly edited by Tim Huntley, also part of the ``Serengeti'' team, ``Alaska'' offers captivation and enlightenment from start to finish. With its underlying ecological message, this is IMAX filmmaking at its best.

Narrated by Charlton Heston, ``Alaska'' begins showing today at the IMAX Theater located at 700 State Drive in Los Angeles, at the California Museum of Science and Industry. Showtimes are 11 a.m., 1, 3, 5, and 8 p.m. daily. ``Africa: The Serengeti'' continues at 2 p.m. daily. Information: [phone].

THE FACTS

The film: ``Alaska'' (not rated).

The stars: Narrated by Charlton Heston.

Behind the scenes: Directed, co-written and co-produced by George Casey. Co-written by Mose Richards. Executive-produced by Paul Novros. Photography direction by Rodney Taylor. Edited by Tim Huntley.

Running time: 40 minutes.

Playing: IMAX Theater at the California Museum of Science and Industry, 700 State Drive, Los Angeles.

Our rating: Four Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: To survive the long Alaskan winter, brown bears fish for migrating salmon, sometimes eating up to 100 salmon a day and gaining 300 pounds before heading off to hibernate through the winter.