Laurence de La Ferrière

Jean-Louis Étienne

Matthieu Tordeur

Jérome Chappellaz

Dominique Le Brun

1947. The rush to the poles marked the beginning of an incredible human adventure to discover the last-remaining unknown lands. In France, Paul-E?mile Victor persuaded the government to finance expeditions to explore the Arctic and Antarctic. For the pioneers the conditions were Dantean, all in the name of science.

Accompanying a husband-and-wife team of naturalists aboard the 50-foot schooner Damien II, this National Geographic program journeys through the northern tip of Antarctica to peer into the heart of penguin country. As viewers observe a fascinating and highly functional avian society, they'll also spy breathtaking natural formations and a variety of ocean creatures, including humpback whales, elephant seals and more.

Antarctica lives in our dreams as the most remote, the most forbidding continent on Planet Earth. It is a huge land covered with ice as thick as three miles, seemingly invulnerable, cold and dark for eight months of the year. Yet Antarctica is also a fragile place, home to an incredible variety of life along its edges, arguably the most stunning, breathtaking and still-pristine place on earth. The one constant is that it is constantly changing, every season, every day, every hour. I've been fortunate to travel to Antarctica many times; most recently with 3D cameras, a first for the continent. The result is our new film, Antarctica: On the Edge.

Greenland, the largest island in the world, is unlike any other country. The film recounts the exploration of the Inlandis cavities in Greenland during the summer of 1992. Janot Lamberton, one of the pioneers of these expeditions, ventured, with speleologists and mountaineers, into the moulins, these immense crevasses that tear through the back of the Inlandis, a vast glacier four times the size of France, while glaciologist Louis Reynaut studies infraglacial phenomena. It is obviously not easy to penetrate the depths of the ice and film at a depth of 150 meters in sub-zero temperatures. The light is blue in one of the most fascinating landscapes on the planet, where scientists and explorers collaborate to deepen their knowledge of the Earth.

Explorer Adam Shoalts embarks on an estimated 4000 km journey across the Canadian Arctic by canoe and on foot, alone.

As the ice shrinks in the Arctic, polar bears are struggling to survive in a fast melting world. Although classified a marine mammal, the polar bear is not adapted to hunting in the water. And it is certainly no match for the world's greatest aquatic hunter -- the killer whale. In the last few years, scientists have noted an ever-growing number of killer whales in Arctic waters in the summer months. More and more have been attracted to these hunting grounds by the growing expanse of open water. They attack the same prey as the polar bears: seals, narwhal, belugas and bowhead whales.

Documentary about the work of Claude Lorius, who began studying Antarctic ice in 1957, and, in 1965, was the first scientist to be concerned about global warming.

The story of Steve, an Adélie penguin, on a quest to find a life partner and start a family. When Steve meets with Wuzzo the emperor penguin they become friends. But nothing comes easy in the icy Antarctic.