Ivan Reitman’s First Film “Orientation” (1968)

Last night, we sad­ly learned of the pass­ing of Ivan Reit­man, direc­tor of many beloved come­dies–Meat­balls (1979), Stripes (1981), Ghost­busters (1984), and beyond.

Born in Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1946–his moth­er an Auschwitz sur­vivor and his father an under­ground resis­tance fighter–Reitman moved to Cana­da as a young child, where he even­tu­al­ly attend­ed McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty. And there he “pro­duced and direct­ed Ori­en­ta­tion [in 1968], the most suc­cess­ful stu­dent film ever made in Cana­da,” writes Macleans. “Pro­duced at a cost of $1,800 while Reit­man was pres­i­dent of the McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Film Board, Ori­en­ta­tion — the sto­ry of a fresh­man dur­ing his first week at uni­ver­si­ty — was acquired by Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry­Fox of Cana­da as a “fea­turette” to accom­pa­ny John And Mary in first-run engage­ments across the coun­try.” “It earned $15,000 in rentals and con­tin­ues to be in demand…” You can watch it above, or on McMas­ter’s web­site.

For any­one inter­est­ed in hear­ing Reit­man dis­cuss his devel­op­ment as a film­mak­er, we’d rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to his 2014 inter­view with Marc Maron.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

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