Shackleton's Antartic expedition film at IFI
A film from 1919 of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole will be screened next Wednesday, 18 October, at the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar.
Lecturer and Antarctic guide Jonathan Shackleton, himself a cousin of the explorer, will introduce the film.
'South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antartic', which was directed by Australian cameraman Frank Hurley, chronicles what happened to the explorer and his team of twenty-seven men on the 1914 expedition when their ship Endurance was crushed by vast banks of ice and they were left stranded for almost two years.
Shackleton ordered Hurley to abandon the majority of his bulky photographic glass plates and film footage to lighten his load. In the end Hurley managed to save 150 plates together with his precious rolls of cine film.
In 1919 Shackleton published his written account of the expedition, and lectured with Hurley's film as accompaniment.
He died in 1921, aged just 47, on his fourth expedition south.
This restored version of the film has been treated with tinting and toning to match the original prints by the British Film Institute.
The film will be screened at 6.30pm at the IFI on Wednesday 18 October.
