Ice People is a documentary film directed by Anne Aghion

Anne Aghion

Anne Aghion is a French-American documentary filmmaker and Guggenheim fellow.In 2005, she won an Emmy Award for her documentary In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies.-Filmmaking career:...

 about the research of Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis in Antarctica. Produced by Dry Valleys Productions, this 2008 film portrays the scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

s discovering fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s from 13.9 million years ago. The film premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival

San Francisco International Film Festival

San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...

 in April 2008 and was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival

Jerusalem Film Festival

The Jerusalem Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in Jerusalem, Israel. The festival was the brainchild of Lia van Leer, who inaugurated it on May 17, 1984...

 in July 2008. This film is scheduled to air on Sundance Channel in 2009.

Synopsis

Ice People brings Anne Aghion

Anne Aghion

Anne Aghion is a French-American documentary filmmaker and Guggenheim fellow.In 2005, she won an Emmy Award for her documentary In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies.-Filmmaking career:...

 and her crew to Antarctica where they spent four months following the lives of North Dakota State University

North Dakota State University

North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, more commonly known as North Dakota State University , is a public university in Fargo, North Dakota. NDSU has about 14,000 students and it is the largest university in North Dakota based on full time students and land size...

 geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

 professors Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis, as well as the McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research center located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National...

 staff over four months. The film crew then followed the professors and two undergraduate students into the field where they camped out and shot in conditions of extreme cold and winds that ranged from -50°C/-60°F to 0°C/32°F. The film shows the scientific team scouring ancient emptied lakebeds in the hope of finding evidence of plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

s and insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s that would prove that the world's coldest continent was once warm and verdant roughly 14 to 20 million years ago.