Everyday Activist - Antarctic Edge: 70° South

Posted on Friday, August 28, 2015 at 03:00 PM

Review: Antarctic Edge: 70° South

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

Climate change is an important subject. Up on the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska, our guides pointed out how much the glacier had receded, a distance of nearly 500 m from the previous year; closer to home, the Athabasca Glacier keeps receding further and further away from the highway. Beautiful films such as Chasing Ice inspire us to take a deeper look at our environment. On the opposite end of the world, Antarctic Edge: 70 South, talks about climate change and its effects on the south polar ice. Given my last vacations this month in Alaska and the Columbia Icefields I wanted to like this film, though in reality I nearly slept through it.

The documentary follows several scientists studying everything from bacteria to whales, all with the intent to research the effects climate change has had on each species. Monitoring species, though expensive, is important to allow scientists the opportunity to make future predictions about the environment. I know, this all sounds like the foundation for a great movie, say Chasing Ice meets March of the Penguin. However, it’s more like the film maker had ADD while watching too many episodes of “The Office”. She flips back and forth through several different research projects as well as the various roles and personnel on the ship, which should be interesting, but unfortunately kind of confusing as the brain tries to grasp some sense of story line rather than random stories sprinkled haphazardly throughout 72 minutes of film.

There was kind of a basic story line built around the penguin researchers because they needed to go to 70° South to document how the colonies were doing at that particular latitude. It’s pretty scary going into a place not knowing if you can get out due to changing weather conditions. Because of the danger, people have to prepare as best they can to go in as a team to get the data they need and come out quickly. Some of the techniques used to weigh the baby birds I’ve personally used in bat research while in Cuba. This beautiful piece of drama kept the movie from being a complete bust.

The Marda Loop Justice Film Festival will host a screening on September 15th, 2015 at 7:00 pm. I’ll probably go to see the speaker Dr. Shawn Marshall, a glaciologist and climatologist from the University of Calgary's Department of Geography, who will lead the discussion after the movie. If you can’t make the public screening, you can catch it on Netflix.

CalgaryMovies Events: MLJFF: Antarctic Edge: 70° South >