It is no coincidence that the great era of polar exploration—embracing the expeditions of Robert Peary around the turn of the century and Ernest Shackleton in the teen years—parallels the birth of the cinema and the earliest forms of nonfiction feature filmmaking. The ability of the moving camera to bring the most remote and sparsely populated areas of the world to the teeming masses of the new urban cinemas found its most compelling manifestation in the icy and dangerous reaches of the polar regions. The recent revival of interest in the filmed records of Shackleton’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition aboard the Endurance has sparked a renewed interest in those early documents of stark landscapes and resourceful peoples. This series surveys films about the Arctic—ethnographic, fictional, and hybrids of the two—from across the past century and into the newest one. Attracting the talents of major independent directors and emerging Native filmmakers, each focuses on the natural beauty and indigenous cultures of this fascinating region.