Antarctica: A Year on Ice
The phrase “independent cinema” might conjure an image of a scrappy twentysomething with a freshly-minted M.F.A. and a screenplay for an “authentic” small town dramedy. Sometimes, however, an indie filmmaker is born when an individual’s career, experience, and passion all intersect at the right time and place. Such is the case with Anthony Powell, a veteran cameraman and engineer who has spent over a decade filming in Antarctica for numerous projects. In that time, Powell has also been slowly assembling his own feature documentary about life at the bottom of the world. With an assist from Kickstarter, his film has finally been completed.
As its title suggests, Antarctica: A Year On Ice chronicles 12 months among the few thousand resolute souls who make their living on the planet’s least understood and most inhospitable continent. In particular, the film focuses on the elite class of polar citizens who remain for the long, dark Antarctic winter—including Powell and his wife Christine. By means of candid interviews and hypnotic time-lapse footage, the director conveys the alternately exquisite and punishing experience of daily life in a land wholly hostile to humankind.
Powell’s film inevitably invites comparison to Werner Herzog’s superb documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World. Where the latter filmmaker characteristically relies on his interloper status to find eccentric points of engagement, Powell’s picture is the ultimate insider’s journal, intent on expressing the “Antarctic life” as it is actually lived. Like any record crafted by an enthusiast, the film sometimes risks overselling the continent’s wonders, but Powell makes a point to also document the warts, from crushing cabin fever to swamps of penguin waste. It’s an approach that supports Antarctica: A Year on Ice’s primary ambition: to capture the uncanny allure of the last terrestrial frontier.
Antarctica: A Year on Ice will screen nightly at 7:30 p.m. on July 17-18 and 20-22 at the Webster Film Series, located in the Winifred Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood) on the Webster University campus. Admission is $6 (cash only).
