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The Honolulu Advertiser

Updated at 11:18 a.m., Wednesday, March 21, 2007

UH showing films tomorrow on penguins, polar ice

Advertiser Staff

The Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa is offering two films Thursday night, one about penguins and the other about polar ice,

"Of Penguins and Men," a 52-minute French film shot in 2005, was directed by Luc Jacquet et Jerome Maison.

While marching and belly-flopping to their own drummer, Antarctica's Emperor Penguins had company. This documentary film follows a production crew during the nine dark months it filmed the remarkable lives of those penguins in their austerely magnificent world.

"Ice Island," is a 58-minute, 2003 U.S film directed by Wes Skiles.

When the world's largest iceberg calved off Antarctica in early 2000, marine biologist Greg Stone and photographer Wes Skiles saw it as an invitation. Assembling a team of scientists, explorers, sailors and a helicopter pilot, they set off on the intrepid little Braveheart for the Southern Ocean to find and study this anomaly.

"Ice Island" is a high-definition film that documents a New England Aquarium expedition to make contact with this huge piece of ice. With numb limbs and chilled bones, the team goes where no one has gone before, diving deep under the ice, to find out what giant melting icebergs mean in the context of 21st-century global warming.

The films will be shown from 7-9:15 p.m. Thursday at the Spalding Auditorium on the UH-Manoa campus. They will also show again on Sunday at 5 p.m. Cost is $3 for students and faculty and $5 for general.