MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

High Praise for Shackleton Antarctic Film.

A two-hour television document re-enacting Sir Ernest Shackleton's epic 1914-1916 trans-Antarctic expedition has won rave reviews in the United Kingdom.

The Channel Four documentary entitled "Endurance: Shackleton and the Antarctic", screened by renowned producer, George Butler, draws heavily upon original film captured by the expedition's brilliant Australian photographer, Frank Hurley. It also uses the recorded voices of some of the principal characters, contemporary diary entries, interviews with descendants and commentary by experts led by the polar historian and Shackleton's biographer, Roland Huntford.

The gripping format tells the astonishing story of how miraculously all 27 men on the expedition survived nearly two years of unimaginable hardship after their ship, Endurance, was trapped and crushed by encroaching ice, and sank.

The documentary faithfully captures the drama, heroism, and the style of Shackleton's charismatic leadership by relating in a simple, straightforward style how tragedy was turned into triumph in one of the greatest stories of survival, endurance and rescue in the history of polar exploration.

It begins with Shackleton's famous newspaper advertisement seeking companions: "Wanted: Men for hazardous journey ...constant danger ...safe return doubtful ... honour and recognition in case of success"! He received no fewer than five-thousand replies.

It shows how the party made its way to Elephant Island, in the SouthShetland Islands, from where Shackleton set off with five companions in asmall boat,called the James Caird, crossing 800 miles of the stormiest waters in the world. He and two companions men traversed South Georgia's unmapped mountains on foot to make contact with the outside world for the first time in eighteen months at the Norwegian whaling station at Stromness. In repeated attempts, in four different ships, Shackleton went back to rescue all the men he had left behind.

The documentary ends with shots of Shackleton's grave at the whalers' cemetery at Grytviken in South Georgia where he suffered a fatal heart attack on a subsequent expedition.

The Channel Four documentary has been hailed as an engrossing contribution to the spate of films, books, media articles, and exhibitions this year and last in Britain and the United States in a remarkable revival of interest in the famous explorer which newspapers c