Love, survival & family

In creating the documentary, March of the Penguins, director Luc Jacquet wrote:

"My goal is to dig from the ice a story which has never seen the light of day for want of a teller. A story repeated every winter, as it has been for hundreds of thousands of years. But there has never been a generation of men to witness and shape it, to pass it down, for man has never colonized the Antarctic. The emperor penguin had never encountered man before the first polar explorers arrived a century ago. In 1950, when tentative, makeshift bases were established here, scientific observation had replaced legend as man’s preferred narrative.

The emperor penguin and man have not lived together long enough for folktales or myths to develop. They remain strangers, crossing on rare occasions in the vast desert expanses of the Antarctic.

With this in mind, my desire is to tell a real story: through the extraordinary images of the emperor penguin during the austral winter, images that have always fascinated me; and with words worthy of both the Antarctic’s excessive nature, and the emperor’s epic destiny. It is time for the emperor’s legend to be told."

March of the Penguins won the Best Documentary Feature at the Seventh Annual Academy Awards last March. Aside from the Oscar achievement, the documentary feature won the Best Editing (Sabine Emiliani), and Best Cinematography (Jerome, Laurent Chalet) at the British Academy Awards. It was chosen 2006 Best Documentary by the Broadcast Film Critics Association; the Chicago Film Critics Association; the Las Vegas Film Critics Association; the Online Film Critics Association; the Phoenix Film Critics Association; the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review. The Writers Guild of America also named Penguins editor Emiliani Best Documentary Editor in 2005 and gave its writer Jordan Roberts Best Documentary Screenplay.

March of the Penguins will be released locally by Unitel Pictures. It has been translated into Filipino by Chriz Martinez and Eugene Evasco and retitled, Penguin, Penguin, Paano ka Ginawa. It is narrated by Sharon Cuneta. Its original version was narrated by the venerable Morgan Freeman.

The documentary which runs for 85 minutes is the story about the remarkable journey of thousands of emperor penguins across the ice deserts of Antartica to mate, breed, rear and propagate their race. It is a heartwarming story of love, survival and family in the coldest place on earth.

The penguins can thermo-regulate their body temperature. Warm blooded, they can maintain constant body temperature even in the most extreme conditions. Penguins huddle and save a lot of energy. Their backs are exposed to the wind, and penguins take turns so that the ones outside can eventually come to the center and be protected from the extreme cold of the Antarctic.

Penguins have the ability to survive on their food reserve when they are fasting. Fasting usually lasts for 117 days for the males which includes the whole span of the breeding period – mating, laying of the egg, the incubation period, hatching of the chicks. And each male penguin can lose up to a third of its body weight. A penguin usually lays just one egg. The egg is fragile and has to be incubated. So much care is given so as not to break the fragile egg or to come in contact with the ice as it will freeze.

Penguins are geniuses when it comes to vocal recognition. A young penguin can recognize his parents’ distinctive sound even with the other penguins singing around. A female penguin usually leaves to look for food after hatching her egg, leaving the incubation of the egg to her male partner. But before she leaves, she will create a sound that is distinguishable to her partner. If she comes back and survives the harsh winter, she makes the sound and she reunites with her partner. Then she regurgitates her food which she has stored to her chick.

Now it is time for the male penguin to leave. He has to get himself back in shape. He has lost pounds while incubating the baby penguin. But before he leaves, father and child learn a song. The baby penguin must be able to memorize his father’s distinctive sound. Otherwise, he will go hungry, because he can only be fed through his mother or father. Baby penguins are able to get food on their own after three weeks. By that time, they are about 20 to 25 pounds.

"By showing this multi-awarded documentary to local audiences, Unitel is living up to its commitment to provide Filipino movie audiences with more viewing choices and quality, first-class entertainment," says Tony Gloria.

Penguin, Penguin, Paano Ka Ginawa will be shown in theaters soon.