How can our environment best be addressed in nature films? For example, by using the camera to capture impressive events, both dramatic and exciting, with the lens, but deliberately keeping a low profile. Or by additionally reinforcing impressions through movement, framing and colouring, by having a “language”. Or by itself becoming an invisible instrument of creative work, which, like the painter’s brush, combines colours and shapes to create an artistic overall picture that allows us to intentionally participate in the emotions of the filmmaker at the location of the shot, far beyond the level of pure depiction. The latter is certainly one of the supreme disciplines of camera work, which the film Voyage au pôle sud [Voyage to the South Pole] masters with virtuosity and implements just as consistently, as is evident in the black and white presentation alone, as a means of artistic reduction to the essentials – a work that sensually reveals a different, unexpected Antarctica to us, courageously realised with a self-confident signature.

France 2023 – 83 min – DOP: Christophe Graillot – Directed by: Luc Jacquet