Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

Ross Island, Antarctica

The largest American base and the largest human settlement in Antarctica, McMurdo serves as a logistics hub and provides permanent laboratories for research. About a thousand people live there during the austral summer, with heated accommodations, a radio station, and even a bowling alley.

The scene : Herzog arrives at McMurdo, the largest American base on the continent, which he describes as a "terrible mining town" overrun with machinery and construction sites. There he encounters those whom a philosophical heavy equipment operator refers to as "professional dreamers": the driver of the gigantic Ivan the Terra Bus, a former banker, a plumber proud of his "Aztec" hands, a linguist met in the greenhouse, a globetrotter who performs at the base bar, a mechanic with a bag always ready, and the glaciologist Douglas MacAyeal in his laboratory. Upon returning from their research, divers Henry Kaiser and Samuel Bowser give a guitar concert on a rooftop.

Ross Island, Antarctica

Built in 1902 for Captain Scott's expedition and also associated with Shackleton, this explorers' hut still stands next to the McMurdo Station.

The scene : As they approach McMurdo, Herzog points to the hut built in 1902 for Captain Scott, which still stands just a few steps from the station.

Victoria Land, Antarctica

The scene : After 85 km of ice shelf from Ross Island, the team reaches this dive camp built on solid ground, by the frozen sea. Henry Kaiser, whose underwater images drew Herzog to Antarctica, welcomes the filmmakers; under the shelter protecting the dive hole, biologist Sam Bowser is preparing for his last Antarctic dive. The divers, without a tether, explore the world beneath the ice and bring back foraminifera, including three new species. A disoriented penguin, 80 km from its colony, also appears before heading further into the continent.

Ross Island, Antarctica

It is at Cape Royds that the very first scientific study of penguins was conducted by a member of the Shackleton expedition.

The scene : Herzog joins the penguin colony at Cape Royds, where the specialist David Ainley, who has been observing them for nearly twenty years, patiently answers his perplexing questions about their habits and a possible "madness" of the penguins. As the birds dart towards the open water, one of them does not head towards the sea or the colony but goes straight towards the mountains, some 70 km away.

Ross Island, Antarctica

Active volcano on Ross Island rising to about 3,800 m, Mount Erebus is one of only three volcanoes in the world whose crater exposes magma directly, with one in Congo and one in Ethiopia.

The scene : The final campsite of the journey: Mount Erebus, whose crater houses an open-air lava lake. After a lesson in etiquette facing the volcanic bombs, Herzog films the lake finally cleared of mist, with the observation camera of volcanologists William McIntosh and Clive Oppenheimer, in tweed at the edge of the crater in tribute to the explorers of old. On the slopes, the steam from the fumaroles sculpts strange ice chimneys, sometimes two stories high, into which the team descends; at base camp, the scientists sometimes need medical attention due to the altitude.

Ross Island, Antarctica

Hut from the Shackleton expedition at Cape Royds, preserved in its original state for a century.

The scene : Herzog visits Shackleton's original hut, which has remained intact for a hundred years, its shelves laden with canned goods evoking for him "a vanished supermarket"; he meditates there on the end of adventure and exploration.

Antarctica

Under the pole lie galleries carved into the ice, where the extreme cold and dry air keep the objects placed in their niches intact.

The scene : The team pushes to the South Pole. Imagining extraterrestrial archaeologists from the future, Herzog descends into the tunnels dug beneath the pole, where it is even less than 70 degrees: in niches carved out of the ice lie a frozen sturgeon, hidden beneath the exact point of the geographic South Pole, a box of Russian caviar, and artificial flowers surrounded by a garland of frozen popcorn.

Ross Island, Antarctica

Launch facility for long-duration stratospheric balloons, whose two hangars were among the tallest buildings in Antarctica.

The scene : At the foot of Erebus, on the ice, stand the two tallest buildings on the continent: in these hangars, they prepare the scientific payloads that a balloon will carry into the stratosphere. Herzog is interested in the neutrino detection project of physicist Peter Gorham from the University of Hawaii, whose detector has an incantation in Hawaiian, and then witnesses the launch of the giant helium-filled balloon.

Ross Island, Antarctica

The scene : Before they can leave McMurdo, each resident must attend the "Happy Camper" survival school: two days to learn how to dig trenches and build igloos, in which they must spend the night. During a simulated blizzard exercise, the trainees advance tethered together, a bucket on their heads, and the line quickly drifts far from its target.

Ross Island, Antarctica

The scene : Arriving on a military flight from New Zealand, Herzog lands on the ice runway of McMurdo: from spring to the austral summer, from October to February, planes land on the thick sea ice nearly 2.5 meters deep, with the Transantarctic Mountains in the distance.