MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Movie hall in Antarctica

Argentina will inaugurate this Monday the first movie hall in King George Island in the Jubany base.

The cinema will have 53 seats and the film to be screened is an Argentine production "Avellaneda Moon" by director Juan Jose Campanella.

The hall also has an adjoining reception with toilets and wardrobe.

A total of 24 Argentine produced films in DVD have been scheduled for this winter. Staff from other bases in the island (Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Ucrania, Poland, and Uruguay) has been invited for the inauguration.

Jubany has a stable winter population of 14 people but during the Antarctic season, September to April, jumps to over a hundred, mostly scientists from all over the world.

Since 1990 in close collaboration with the German Alfred Wegener Institut the base set up several research laboratories and aquariums and in 1994 joined efforts with the Atmospheric Physics Institute from Rome to study global climatic conditions and the greenhouse effect.

In 2001 the Oceanography and Geophysics Institute from Trieste, Italy set up a permanent seismic survey operations centre.