PolarCINEMA

The PolarCINEMA is located in Room A1-5 and will run in parallel with the science sessions during the IPY-Oslo Science Conference.

Coordinator: Mare Pit (lead photo)
Moderator: Maya Salganek

During the International Polar Year 2007-2008 film proved a strong instrument to explore new frontiers of polar science and mesmerized and informed the public. Fiction films, documentaries, TV-series and Internet broadcasts; they all helped translate polar science to the screen, portrayed a rich history of exploration, culture and contemporary life and investigated peoples' and natures' response and adaptation to a changing climate.

In Oslo it is time to celebrate this rich legacy created by professionals and amateurs looking for new and innovative ways to get the message across. The PolarCINEMA is a mixture of screenings, debates and open discussions with film makers, educators, scientists and the public on the success and impact of the medium in increasing our understanding of the Arctic and Antarctic and their relation to the rest of the globe.

Tuesday 8th June

Jan-Anders Diesen

Is professor in film and Television Studies, and will be showing the first footage filmed on both poles. Diesen has written numerous books and articles on documentary film making the history of silent film and produced a television documentary on Norwegian cinema. Silent explorer films have become the focus of his more recent studies and he is in the process of writing a book on the use of film in this heroic era in polar exploration.

Baffin Island Expedition 1953

In 1953, the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) organized an international, interdisciplinary expedition to Baffin Island. Baird. One of the expedition members, Hans Weber, decided to bring his 16 mm camera and shot 40 minutes of film. It might be one of the oldest colour films of an Arctic expedition documenting the style of the scientific work in years.

In 2003 four Swiss members of the original 1953 expedition decided to work together with director Marcello Weiss, AINA and the people from Auyuittuq National Park to produce a film that combines contemporary interviews with Weber's historical footage to tell the story of their work and daily life during the expedition. 

A Polar Adventure: Polar Bear Trapping

The original members of a Norwegian winter expedition in 1968-1969 tell their unique story of their research on the polar bear population around the island of Hopen (Svalbard). The documentary includes some unique historical footage of the trapping and examination of polar bears.

From Tall Grass to Tundra

From Tall Grass to Tundra explores the ecological diversity of central Canada and the researchers who seek to understand it. Discover how science and conservation are helping preserve Canada's biodiversity and track elusive seals around remote northern islands with modern science and traditional knowledge.

Arctic Cliffhangers

Take an aerial plunge off an Arctic coastal headland into the abyss of a seabird colony to find out how marine ecosystem changes are affecting the delicate balance of life for some hardy creatures of the northern seas. The story follows biologist and filmmaker Steve Smith as he travels across the eastern Canadian Arctic, exploring the stunning colonies of cliff‐dwelling seabirds where scientists are unlocking many of the secrets of climate change.

Born under the Northern Star

Far up North in a remote bay on the eastern coast of the Spitsbergen lies an unchartered cove where France and Eric decide to settle to live onboard their small red sailing boat amidst the icepack. They become active witnesses of the diminishing ice floe due the climate change and participate as volunteers in the international science program Damocles. The arrival of Leonie their little baby girl, born under the polar stars, turns their daily life in the Arctic upside down and gives a new meaning to their radically different choice of life. An intimate story which questions our way of living and attests of the fascinating beauty of the Arctic.
 

Wednesday 9th June    

The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning

An in‐depth report on climate change research conducted by the world's scientific community stationed in Antarctica during International Polar Year. UN Under‐Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, Achim Steiner, said about the film: "Of all the canaries in the climate coal mine, the polar regions and the mountain glaciers are singing the hardest and the loudest. Mark Terry's new climate change documentary underlines these realities with some of the latest and increasingly sobering scientific findings."                  

Inuk

This feature film covers a journey from Greenland's south to its north as an homage to the origins of the Inuit people. It is the coming-of-age story of 16-year-old Inuk, who is torn between his alcoholic mother and his dreams of creating an Inuit rock band. He is sent to a foster home in the north, where his foster guardian and teacher, Aviaaja, sends him to the bear hunter Ikuma so that he may learn wisdom. Here begins Inuk's difficult initiation into manhood through a journey by dogsled on which both boy and man must face much more than the bitter cold and fragile sea-ice.

Thursday 10th June     

Ice People

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, finding out what drives this dedicated pursuit of science, capturing the true experience of living and working in this extreme environment, and witnessing one of the most significant discoveries about climate change in recent Antarctic science. Ice People conveys the vast beauty, the claustrophobia, the excitement and the stillness of an experience set to nature's rhythm.

Arctic Syndrome

Visiting Spitsbergen with its rugged mountains, sweeping tundra and magnificent glaciers is an unforgettable experience that can have a great impact on a person's life. It is here that filmmaker Kasia Dąbkowska follows a group of true polar enthusiasts from the Polish Polar Station Hornsund that seem to have been infected with one and the same virus. And the virus with symptoms as ‘Arctic Fever' is spreading fast. Hornsund appears to be in the hold of an ‘Arctic Syndrome'.

Trapped at the End of the World

In 1901 an expedition team of 28 Scandinavians and one Argentinean, led by Nils Otto Gustaf Nordenskjöld, set off on the ship Antarctic to explore the South Pole. The only Argentinean crew member was Alférez de Navío José María Sobral. They would be the first to spend a whole year in the desolate white continent. They had planned the expedition carefully, but something went wrong. Divided in three groups they came to face hunger, loneliness and their own limits. This is a story of 30 men ‘Trapped at the end of the world'.

Chasing the Polar Low

Unpredictable and damaging winter storms have a tendency to sneak past the meteorologist's observation grid, and are almost impossible to forecast. But now the biggest storm chase in Norwegian history has started. With only three weeks at their disposal, the scientist at Andøya face a race against time and the forces of nature in their attempt to capture the first complete polar low.
 

Friday 11th June

Silent Snow

Two girls examine the incomprehensible environmental damage that is poisoning their heritage, Greenland, and the only home their ancestors have known for thousands of years.

"Stunning cinematography captures this most timely issue" - World Wide Short Film Festival, Canadian Film Centre

The SWIPA Project, Arctic monitoring and Assessment Programme

A short documentation of the observed changes in the arctic cryosphere and implications for the arctic indigenous peoples.

Melting Arctic

It was the beginning of the IPY when Captain Knut Solberg chartered his boat to a group of research scientist eager to calculate the rate of melt of the Greenland ice cap. For the sailing expedition in arctic waters Solberg assembled a crack team, including a Norwegian carpenter who had built his own boat, a technology guru based in Greenland, a Canadian lawyer who had worked in several communities in Nunavut and knew a great deal about the territory, and one of the last Norwegian sailmakers. Together the team set out on their challenging journey, capturing the Inuit's dramatic confrontation with a milder and increasingly unstable climate underway.

EALÁT. Reindeer Husbandry, A Human Coupled Ecosystem in the Midst of Rapid Change

Premiere of the documentary about the EALÁT project, which is an IPY Reindeer Herders Vulnerability Network Study and examines reindeer pastoralism in the light of global warming. The documentary features interviews with EALÁT researchers, reindeer herders and partners across Eurasia and portrays people and reindeer in a changing climate.

Voices of the Caribou People

is a student film that documents the local and traditional knowledge of indigenous people who have a close relationship with caribou. The filming was carried out in partnership with local communities and attempted to give voice to indigenous perspectives about human‐caribou relations to complement on‐going ecological and biological research on caribou.

TARA. Journey to the Heart of the Climate Machine

Tells the daily life of an extraordinary scientific mission. We discover how crew members, prisoners of the ice, onboard Tara, fight incessantly against the cold, permanent night or day, the movements of ice sheets or the storms that destroy continuously the equipment that are under the threat of the bears, driven to the heart of the Arctic because of the pack ice disappearance. But beyond this feat, this documentary shows us that the scientific mission has revealed a reality that is much more alarming than anticipated for the world climate.
 

Saturday 12th June      

Take it from the Top

Highlights from ‘Take it from the Top', a community‐based video making research project where students interviewed community members on their conceptions of the North and South and made short personal films about their North.

Imiqutailaq: Path of the Arctic Tern

A touching and inspiring film chronicle about the life‐altering journey from one end of the Earth to the other, by two Inuit teens from Canada's northernmost Arctic community, to the bottom of the world, Antarctica. The journey was the dream of the late Dr. Fritz Koerner (1932‐2008), the irreverent and legendary glaciologist whom the people of Grise Fiord named Imiqutailaq (Arctic Tern), after the little seabird that flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back each year. The documentary touches on Fritz's 50 years traveling Pole to Pole studying the ice, and how he wanted these Inuit youth to better understand the impacts of climate change, and inspire everyone to do something about protecting the Poles and the Planet.