ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY DAYS UNDER THE WORLD

Following a six month period of darkness, the first group of scientists arrive by plane at McMurdo Sound. During their one hundred and forty days at the bottom of the world, American and New Zealand scientists will help each other with their Antarctic research programmes.

This film follows one summer’s work by New Zealand scientists in the Ross Dependency in the Antarctic and the exploration of some of the last unmapped regions. The mysteries of the snow covered continent are probed by geologists, biologists and physicists at the Scott Base laboratory and on expeditions, possibly among the last to be made with huskies.

HMNZS Endeavour brings supplies from Wellington, while ice-breakers of the United States Navy cut a passage for her through the pack ice to McMurdo Sound.