Mandy's Blog

“Some of the most ground breaking science in the world is taking place in Antarctica, often scientists will prepare for years for a few weeks of research on the continent.” - Anthony Powell, filmmaker and photographer

The Antarctic continent had remained largely neglected until the late 19^th Century because of its hostile environment, isolation and lack of resources. Making the region extremely valuable for all types of scientific research, especially those related to climate change. The continent has about 90% of the world’s ice, therefore 70% of the world’s fresh water. In its current state about 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice - if all of this ice melted, sea levels would rise a whopping 60 metres - that’s 200 feet!

“Some of the most ground breaking science in the world is taking place in Antarctica, often scientists will prepare for years for a few weeks of research on the continent.” - Anthony Powell, filmmaker and photographer

The Antarctic continent had remained largely neglected until the late 19^th Century because of its hostile environment, isolation and lack of resources. Making the region extremely valuable for all types of scientific research, especially those related to climate change. The continent has about 90% of the world’s ice, therefore 70% of the world’s fresh water. In its current state about 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice - if all of this ice melted, sea levels would rise a whopping 60 metres - that’s 200 feet!

I was lucky enough to ask Kiwi documentarian Anthony Powell, producer and director of this week’s feature Antarctica: A Year on Ice about climate change. He told me “climate change right now is how smoking was in the '60s. All the scientists know it is bad and there is more evidence for climate change than there is for smoking causing lung cancer, yet the wider public acceptance of this knowledge and the will to take action is taking a long time to filter through… there are massive changes happening in West Antarctica right now that are only getting worse.”

Easily the coldest, windiest, driest place but obviously one of the most breathtakingly beautiful on our planet - Antarctica: A Year on Ice provides a visual chronicle of what it is like to live in Antarctica for a full year. 15 years and 9 winters in the making, this is the story told by the everyday workers who keep the stations ticking over. Anywhere from 500 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year - currently a total 30 countries operate research stations on the continent.

Filmmaker Powell, picked up his first job in 1998 as the communications technician for Telecom at New Zealand’s Scott Base, in his spare time he photographed everything he could. He says his big motivation for the film, was to capture the human experience and film the winter because no one had done it before. A self taught filmmaker, who specialises in time-lapse images, Powell had to invent and build new film equipment and adopt new techniques to handle the harshest of harsh winter conditions. The coldest temperature recorded is -89.2 C/ -128.6F – most camera batteries would freeze after a few minutes and extreme storms would send tripods flying. The longest time-lapse sequence took him almost 5 months to film. Often shots that are only on the screen for a few seconds took days or sometimes months to capture.

You’ll enjoy this film for it’s out of this world, never before seen imagery and interesting facts – the months of winter are total darkness, that’s right, no light while the sun is below the horizon for 4 months! Not just restricted to the ice, the filmmaker manages to eloquently capture on camera the marine and wild life, beautiful landscapes and clear night skies overwhelmed by stars. Look out for the nacreous clouds that create incredibly vivid rainbow hues – a magical sight if ever you saw one. Powell’s closing comments about climate change offers some insight, “an area that is currently being studied very intensely that you will probably hear more about in the news over the next few years is the Pine Island Glacier.”

Antarctica: A Year on Ice has won several national and international awards – the cinematography is the winner in this one. Powell has had his footage appear in a number of museums – including the New York Natural History Museum and numerous TV programmes – the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and most recently BBC’s Frozen Planet series.

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