9:43 a.m., Dec. 2, 2008----"Encounters at the End of the World," a Discovery Channel film about the “hidden society” of men and women on a quest to do cutting-edge science in Antarctica, will be presented Sunday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in the Trabant University Center Theater.

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The German director Werner Herzog completed the film in 2007. Previously, Herzog produced “Grizzly Man,” which chronicled the life and death of Timothy Treadwell among grizzly bears in Alaska, in addition to more than 40 other films.

Herzog and his cinematographer, Peter Zeitlinger, traveled to McMurdo Station, on Ross Island, the logistical hub of the U.S. Antarctic Program and home to 1,100 people during the austral summer. They met and filmed fascinating people and animals on their adventures in this extreme environment, from the frigid depths of the Ross Sea to the top of Mount Erebus volcano.

The film will be introduced by Julia Dooley, a Delaware schoolteacher who spent two months on the ANDRILL project in Antarctica in 2007. ANDRILL, which stands for "ANtarctic geological DRILLing," is a collaboration involving more than 200 scientists, educators and students from Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The chief goal of the program is to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes to predict the potential timing frequency and location of future changes based on different global warming scenarios.

Dooley was one of only five teachers nationwide to be selected for the project last year. A photographer as well as a teacher, Dooley will illustrate her introductory talk with a few photographs from Antarctica. An exhibition of her photographs, "Something Frozen This Way Comes," will be presented at the Newark Arts Alliance beginning Friday, Jan. 9.

The film showing is co-sponsored by the University of Delaware's Center for International Studies and the William S. Carlson International Polar Year Events as part of UD's Fall 2008 International Film Series. The international film series is made possible by the generous support of the Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events (CAPE).