The few thousand kilometers that separate Patagonia from the South Pole are a fascinating and hypnotic journey for explorers. Some even speak of an addiction, 'the Antarctic bite'. March of the Penguins (2005) director Luc Jacquet has been experiencing it for 30 years. His new film is a visually-striking adventure, offering us images beyond words, an ultimate tribute to a vanishing continent.
On his ship "Calypso," as well as in a submarine, Jacques Cousteau and his crew sail from South America and travel to Antarctica. They explore islands, reefs, icebergs, fossils, active volcanic craters, and creatures of the ocean never before seen. This voyage took place in 1975, and Captain Cousteau became one of the first explorers ever to dive beneath the waters of the frozen South Pole.
In 1989, the German polar explorer Arved Fuchs and the South Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner set out together to reach the South Pole on skis without sled dogs or motor technology and then cross the entire Antarctic. There are problems right from the start because the onward transport to the starting point by plane cannot be carried out on time. Finally, the adventurers set off from Patriot Hills Base Camp on the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf to the Pole. The completely different character traits of the two men quickly emerge. Messner is impetuous and pushes for speed. The calm Fuchs divides his strength and consistently follows his pace during all planned breaks. On New Year's Eve 1989, the two men are warmly welcomed by the crew of the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. But the much larger and more dangerous part of their adventurous continental crossing still lies ahead of them. The 3-part documentary shows one of the last great adventures of modern times in impressive pictures.
This series follows a modern expedition that re-creates Sir Ernest Shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition, which launched in 1914. The series joins a crew of five intrepid explorers, led by renowned adventurer, scientist, and author Tim Jarvis, as they duplicate Shackleton's epic sea-and-land voyage in a replica of the original explorer's lifeboat.
