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The Kerguelen Islands, nicknamed the "Islands of Desolation," are a French archipelago of subantarctic islands in the southernmost part of the Indian Ocean. They constitute one of the five districts of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). Uninhabited, the archipelago was discovered in the southern Indian Ocean on February 12, 1772, by the French navigator Yves Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec. This scientific film by Gilbert Dassonville, intended for the general public and for educational purposes, presents the scientific missions underway in 1963 on the Kerguelen Islands. The permanent station at Port-aux-Français, founded in 1950, the archipelago, and the surrounding wildlife are documented by following the multidisciplinary teams (biology, geophysics, geology, meteorology).
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Status
Released
Original Language
FR

Documentary on the Shackleton Antartic expedition. A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance', which was trapped in the ice floes and frigid open ocean of the Antarctic in 1914. Shackleton decided, with many of his crew injured and weak from exposure and starvation, to take a team of his fittest men and attempt to find help. Setting out in appalling conditions with hopelessly inadequate equipment, they endured all weather and terrain and finally reached safety. Persuading a local team of his confidence that the abandoned team would still be alive, he set out again to find them. After almost 2 years trapped on the ice, all members of the crew were finally rescued.

Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica with Captain Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition and filmed the stunning images that make up this extraordinary documentary. (Originally released in 1912 as With Captain Scott in the Antarctic, the material was re-edited and re-issued by Ponting in 1924 as The Great White Silence.)