Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

MEN WANTED for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. — Sir Ernest Shackleton

At the 2000 Telluride Film Festival, the documentary Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition debuted. It was the true story of Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the the South Pole and his struggle to lead his crew to safety after his ship was crushed in the pack ice. This image was taken by photographer, Frank Hurley. An Australian, Hurley ran away from home at age 13, working in an ironworks and the Sydney dockyards before becoming a photographer. Susceptible to flattery, he had a reputation for stopping at nothing to secure a memorable photograph. For that reason, Shackleton threw some of his film and cameras into the ocean rather than lose men trying to preserve the images.

The PBS Shackleton Site is very rich with transcripts, photographs, and timeline. You can even view Hurley’s actual footage of the ship cruising, crushing and collapsing. While Antarctica is inherently breathtaking, Hurley’s images of the voyage are even more dramatic and moving. With a documentarian’s eye, Hurley’s film and photos secured Shackleton’s heroism into the history books.

“What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.”
    Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879 - 1962)
    Canadian Arctic Explorer