Comedy icon Joanna Lumley pursues a life-long dream to track down the elusive and beautiful Northern Lights. She travels North across the Arctic Circle, up through Norway and finally to Svalbard, the most northerly permanently inhabited place on Earth, where she has to cope with temperatures approaching minus 30° C. Joanna’s journey takes her from train to boat and huskysled to snowmobile as she is pulled ever northwards and finally, in a breathtaking climax to the film, Joanna gets to see with her own eyes the spectacular beauty of the Northern Lights. As seen on ABC1.
For centuries, Inuit in the Arctic have lived on and around the frozen ocean. Now, as climate change is rapidly melting the sea ice between Canada and Greenland, the outside world sees unprecedented opportunity. Oil and gas deposits, faster shipping routes, tourism, and fishing all provide financial incentive to exploit the newly opened waters. But for more than 100,000 Inuit, an entire way of life is at stake. Development here threatens to upset the delicate balance between their communities, land, and wildlife. Divided by aggressive colonization and decades of hardship, Inuit in Canada and Greenland are once again coming together, fighting to protect what will remain of their world. The question is, will the world listen?
In a seasonal special, Gordon Buchanan meets the animals who live in nature's winter wonderlands. He reveals their survival secrets, from the polar bear mother who gives her cubs the best possible start in life to the owl that finds food hidden beneath a blanket of snow, plus the plucky penguins that huddle together to keep warm. Gordon also unwraps the lives of our favourite Christmas characters - those wonderful reindeer and our very own robin redbreast!
Climate change has reached the indigenous Nenets people in the north of Siberia. The nomads' herds of reindeer move on thin ice. The warming in the Russian Arctic is becoming dramatically visible. Huge craters open in the thawing permafrost and expose dangerous viruses and bacteria. Forest floors dry out and the taiga catches on fire. The pack ice off the coast is melting and depriving polar bears of their habitat so that they approach human settlements in their desperation. The changes in the nature of the Arctic Circle combine with the measurements of researchers and observations of the indigenous people to form a disturbing overall picture: In the Russian Arctic, Pandora's box has been opened! The film team had the chance to shoot in regions that were been restricted areas for decades. The documentary shows in impressive and depressing images already existing effects, phenomena and ominous interlinkages of global warming.
Jeremy Clarkson tells the dramatic story of the Arctic convoys of the Second World War, from Russia to the freezing Arctic Ocean.
Project Iceworm was the code name for a top-secret United States Army program during the Cold War to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice — close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union — was kept secret from the Danish government. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized "cover" project, known as Camp Century.
THROAT SONG takes place in the icy landscape of Iqaluit, Nunavut, a small town in the Canadian Arctic. Ippik, a young Inuit woman, is silently suffering from the pains of an abusive relationship. Lost in a community that's been tragically separated from its past, Ippik begins to connect with other victims of violence and seeks to reclaim her voice.
The adventures and exploits of Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867-1936), an intrepid scientist and explorer who laid the foundations of modern oceanography.
The enchanting true-to-life tale of polar bear cubs and their mother on a 400-mile journey from their birth den in Svalbard to the pack ice surrounding the North Pole.
This documentary follows various migratory bird species on their long journeys from their summer homes to the equator and back, covering thousands of miles and navigating by the stars. These arduous treks are crucial for survival, seeking hospitable climates and food sources. Birds face numerous challenges, including crossing oceans and evading predators, illness, and injury. Although migrations are undertaken as a community, birds disperse into family units once they reach their destinations, and every continent is affected by these migrations, hosting migratory bird species at least part of the year.
A portrait of a deserted fisherman's village in Northern Norway called Børfjord - a place with an incredible personality in the middle of a magnificent Arctic nature. The 12 minute short film was filmed in 70mm Super Panavision, using a specially developed "nature animation" technique. The result is a magic flight in one single shot, along the remains of an internal village road. At the same time a whole year passes by at 50 000 times normal speed! Most of the year, the village of Børfjord lies empty with virgin snow between cold houses. People show up only during a short and hectic summer season. But the cycles of nature go on as they have always done, totally independent of what people might do.
Shot mainly using spy cameras, this film gets closer than ever before to the world's greatest land predator. As the film captures its intimate portrait of polar bears' lives, it reveals how their intelligence and curiosity help them cope in a world of shrinking ice.
With "sealfies" and social media, a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit is wading into the world of activism, using humour and reason to confront aggressive animal rights vitriol and defend their traditional hunting practices. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.
FULLSTERKUR is the third documentary in a collection of films produced by Rogue Fitness, exploring strength culture around the world, connected specifically by the ancient tradition of stone lifting. Nestled at the doorstep of the Arctic Circle, the country of Iceland is uniquely acquainted with the relationship between strength and survival. For hundreds of years, men and women were challenged to overcome harsh weather and endless winter nights by developing their own distinct physical and mental fortitude—passed down from the age of the Vikings, and iconically represented by the lifting of heavy stones. Today, on an island with a population of just over 300,000, a disproportionate number of the world’s greatest strength athletes still call Iceland home.
Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.
Beautifully filmed by New Zealand nature photographer Richard Sidey over the past decade around the polar regions, Speechless: The Polar Realm is a visual meditation of light, life, loss and wonder at the ends of the globe. This is the second film in Sidey’s non-verbal trilogy which is comprised of: - Landscapes at the World’s Ends (2010) - Speechless: The Polar Realm (2015) - Elementa (2020)