Ice People
Friday 10th October 2008 from 20h30 to 22h30
Salle 2 / Grand Amphithéâtre
- Directed by
- Anne Aghion
- Written by
- Anne Aghion
- Produced by
- Dry Valleys Production
Documentary, France, United States, 2007, 77 min
What attracts so many scientists in Antartica?
Unique in the genre of exploration and adventure films, Ice People takes you on one of the earth’s most seductive journeys: Antarctica. Emmy-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion spent four months “on the ice” with modern-day polar explorers, to find out what drives dedicated researchers to leave the world behind in pursuit of science, and to capture the true experience of living and working in this extreme environment.
The public focus on climate change has turned the shores of Antarctica into a new tourist mecca, making the earth’s coldest continent the hot place to be. But, inland from the penguins and ice floes, is a magical Antarctica of volcanoes, boulder-strewn valleys and ominous glaciers. Only a small number of scientific research teams get there, braving severe conditions to learn about our planet’s history, and make predictions about our future.
Ice People heads out into the “deep field” with noted scientists Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis, and two undergrad scientists-in-the-making, where they scour across hundreds of miles to find tiny, critical signs of life 20 million years old. The most authentic depiction of life on the ice ever put to film, Ice People conveys the vast beauty, the claustrophobia, the excitement and the stillness of an experience set to nature’s rhythm.
Debate with :
- Anne Aghion, director
- Allan Ashworth, professor in history of life on Earth, sedimentology and paleontology at North Dakota State University in Fargo, Chair of the United States National Committee for Quaternary Research and Vice-President for the International Quaternary Association