South: Shackleton & Endurance Expedition (1919)

In his stunning documentary, Australian photographer, filmmaker, and adventurer Frank Hurley captures the astonishing true story of Sir Ernest Shackelton's ill-fated two-year Antarctic expedition aboard the ship, the Endurance. In July 1914, Shackleton and his twenty-eight-man crew (including Hurley) sailed from England for Antarctica, hoping to be the first explorers to cross the continent. However, eighty miles from land, the Endurance became locked in impenetrable pack ice. For the next nine months, the crew desperately tried to cut "leads," and batter through to open water. Hurley's glorious images show the ghostly Endurance landlocked in unremitting white ice, as far as the eye can see. In August of 1915, the crew and their seventy sleigh dogs were forced to abandon the Endurance as the pressure of the ice began crushing the ship. The crew was able to row to Elephant Island, where twenty-two remained, while Shackelton and five others attempted the desperate eight hundred mile voyage to inhabited South Georgia Island. Miraculously, all of the men survived the two-year ordeal, and Hurley was able to save 150 of his 400 glass plate negatives and all of his film reels to provide this dazzling documentation of the Endurance's harrowing experience.