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The First Ever Documentary Feature was an Antarctic Survival Story
Ernest Shackleton’s incredible story of survival, the 1914-16 Endurance expedition, is remembered partly because of its extraordinary heroics, but also because it was filmed and photographed by a cutting-edge cinematographer, the Australian Frank Hurley. Filming in extremes of cold, stranded in the Antarctic, Hurley created what is considered the world’s first documentary feature.
It was first shown to audiences in 1921 as South, a timeless film whose dramatic images captured the travails of the expedition and fixed it in our memories.
In the History Hit film Saving South, made in association with the BFI, Dan Snow visits the British Film Institute’s special sub-zero nitrate film storage facility where blast-proof vaults protect the last fragments of Frank Hurley’s remarkable original footage.
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“South is a hugely important film,” explains the BFI’s silent film expert, Bryony Dixon. “It’s the first documentary feature ever made. This all-encompassing narrative, including all this incredible footage [of] the crew, the wildlife, scenes that had never been seen before, both in terms of this famous story but just what Antarctica was like. It’s an incredible achievement. To have gotten any pictures at all and brought them back was amazing.”
Hurley might never have brought his footage back. Not only did Hurley film and develop the footage while the ship Endurance was beset by ice, he rescued it from the ship as it sank and later buried his precious footage in the icy soil of Elephant Island as the crew awaited rescue. He did not know it but the cold of the permafrost was ideal for preserving celluloid film. It is now stored at -4.1 degrees Celsius.
Hurley, an Australian known for his extreme camerawork (he is pictured setting up in the rigging), was recruited especially for the expedition. The last footage he captured was the moment the mast of Endurance collapsed. Later he wrote that “I had my camera trained on the ship the whole time. I secured the unique film of the masts collapsing.” He had to throw his cine camera away before trekking and rowing to Elephant Island.
Hurley’s footage was assembled and released after the First World War. The viewing copies of South became scratched and damaged by projectors, yet South is among the classic films the BFI has worked hard to restore.
Angelo Lucatello of the BFI National Archives Conservation Centre explains that the 1996 restoration of South took five years to make. “We looked at about 90 copies and we cut the material together out of 13 different sources. So it’s a little bit like a jigsaw.”
Conservators will prefer original footage that is damaged, but crisp, over copies. “There’s always a problem that you will lose quality,” says Lucatello. “There’s a chance of dirt being printed in.” Examining the negatives yields other insights including Hurley’s use of in-camera effects, such as under-cranking the film when the ship broke up to exaggerate movement and underscore its drama.
Thanks to the work on the original negatives, we can watch the entirety of South as shot by Hurley, cleaned up and digitally remastered: an exceptional dispatch from an audacious Antarctic expedition undertaken a century ago.
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