The Great White Silence

Robert Falcon Scott was a British naval officer and explorer who in 1901 was part of an ambitious but unsuccessful attempt to send an expedition to the South Pole. In 1910, Scott led a second campaign, known as the Terra Nova Expedition, in a renewed effort to be the first man to reach the South Pole, which became a race with British bragging rights at stake when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set out on a trek to the pole at the same time. Herbert Ponting, a talented photographer and cinematographer, was part of the Terra Nova team and shot a great deal of film footage of Scott and his compatriots as they prepared for a great journey that would make them heroes, but would also cost them their lives. Ponting did not join Scott for the final leg of the journey, and survived the Terra Nova voyage; years later, he fashioned his footage into a feature length documentary, and The Great White Silence tells the true story of Scott’s journey to the Antarctic and presents spectacular images of the Terra Nova team before they met their fate. In 2010, the British Film Institute National Archive unveiled a newly restored print of The Great White Silence in a special screening at the BFI London Film Festival.