Encounters at the End of the World

Encounters at the End of the World is a 2007 American documentary film about Antarctica and the people who choose to spend time there. Written and directed by Werner Herzog. Doug MacAyeal Unlike Scott and Shackleton, who viewed the ice as this sort of static monster that had to be crossed to get to the South Pole, we scientists now are able to see the ice as a dynamic living entity that is sort of producing change, like the icebergs that I study. For me it's been a wild ride. First of all I found out that the iceberg that I came down to study not only was larger than the iceberg that sank the Titanic, it was not only larger than the Titanic itself, but it was larger than the country that built the Titanic. That's pretty big. William Jirsa I like to say, if you take everybody who's not tied down they all sort of fall down to the bottom of the planet, so that's how we got here, you know. We're all at loose ends, and here we are together. I remember when I first got down here I sort of enjoyed the sensation of recognizing people with my travel markings. I was like, hey, these are my people. PhDs washing dishes and linguists on a continent with no languages. Peter Gorham The neutrino is the most ridiculous particle you could imagine. A billion neutrinos went through my nose as we were talking. A trillion, a trillion of them went through my nose just now. And they did nothing to me. They passed through all of the matter around us continuously in a huge, huge blast of particles that does nothing at all. They almost exist in a separate universe, but we know as physicists we can measure them, we can make precise predictions and measurements. They exist, but we can't get our hands on them. Werner Herzog I noticed that the divers in their routine were not speaking at all. To me, they were like priests preparing for mass. Under the ice the divers find themselves in a separate reality where space and time acquire a strange, new dimension. Those few who have experienced the world under the frozen sky often speak of it as going down into the cathedral. To be make a complicated story short, he ran into new age ideologues who made insipid claims about black and white magic embedded in the grammar of this language [Ho-Chunk]. Hence, in the stupid trend of academia, it would be better to let the language die than to preserve it. He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains, some seventy kilometers away. Dr. Ainley explained that even if we caught him and brought him back to the colony he would immediately head right back for the mountains. But why? One of these disoriented or deranged penguins showed up at the New Harbor diving camp, already some eighty kilometers away from where it should be. . . . The rules for the humans are do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still and let him go on his way. And here, he's heading off into the interior of the vast continent. With five thousand kilometers ahead of him, he is heading towards certain death. Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable. Our technical civilization makes us particularly vulnerable. There is talk all over the scientific community about climate change. Many of them agree, the end of human life on this earth is assured. Human life is part of an endless chain of catastrophes, the demise of the dinosaurs being just one of these events. We seem to be next. External links 1093824 Encounters at the End of the World Category:2007 American films Category:2007 English-language films Category:Films directed by Werner Herzog Category:American documentary films