The Congress of the Penguins
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Congress of the Penguins |
| Country of production | Switzerland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1993 |
| length | 88 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf |
| script |
Franz Hohler Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf |
| production | Ariane Film AG |
| music |
Sergei Rachmaninov Camille Saint-Saëns Bruno Spoerri |
| camera |
Pio Corradi Patrick Lindenmaier Luc Jacquet |
| cut | Fee Liechti |
The Congress of Penguins is a documentary film by the Swiss director Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf . In his essayistic film he combines nature shots with a call to protect the Antarctic .
content
In the dream, the narrator comes across a colony of emperor penguins that are gathering next to icebergs in the Antarctic. He interprets the assembly as a congress of penguins and his task as that of a translator. Among the sounds he hears the word "Grytviken". The place Grytviken on the island of South Georgia turns out to be a ghost settlement of whalers. Old film images in the Grytviken cinema evoke the time around 1930, when Norwegians processed the whales that were shot there. The narrator feels complicit in the exploitation that led to the death and extinction of 175,000 whales.
On a research ship he goes back to the continent of Antarctica and asks the Penguins Congress for forgiveness. He says the ship comes in the interests of the penguins. But they seem to be further concerned and complain about new airplane runways. Research on the ozone hole also polluted the environment, the narrator notes.
He is looking for a way out of his despair. Through a snowstorm, he arrives at a research team that is drilling in the middle of the ice desert. In the ice cores they read climate data like from a book, but a Chinese philosophizes like penguins about the language of the ice crystals . The narrator understands the message and erases human traces. Then he wakes up from his dream.
background
The film team made three trips by sea to Antarctica for filming:
- In November 1990 from Punta Arenas with the research vessel Polarstern to the Georg von Neumayer station . On the way, the oceanographic works and individual emperor penguins were filmed in the pack ice .
- In March 1991 with a sailing yacht from Punta Arenas to South Georgia. There, steadicam recordings were made in the former whale factories, including in Grytviken and Husvik , as well as animal recordings with king penguins , gentoo penguins , elephant seals and fur seals .
- In November 1992 from Hobart with an Australian ship to Casey Station . Images were taken with Adelie penguins . In Law Dome an ice hole was filmed.
Biologist Luc Jacquet hibernated in the Dumont-d'Urville station in 1992/93 for the previously missing recordings of the gathering of the emperor penguins . Jacquet later became an animal filmmaker and celebrated a box office success in 2006 with The Journey of the Penguins .
Awards
- Quality premium from the Swiss Confederation
- Zurich Film Prize
- Golden MediaNet Award, Munich 1994
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b filmsprung.ch , Thomas Hunziker's film blog , April 22, 2009, accessed on January 19, 2017.