Kon-Tiki (1950)

  More cinema of exploration!  This was the companion piece to Aguirre. 

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five other Norwegian scientists set out to prove Heyerdahl's theory that Pacific islands were settled by early South American natives, rather than the contemporary theory that they had emigrated from Asia.  His crew built a raft from balsa wood, ignoring Western advice to follow as closely as possible examples of native engineering.  They set sail from Peru with no propulsion but the wind.  After 101 days, they reached their first island.

Heyerdahl's theory has been disproven by other scientific enquiries but this is still a fun documentary.  The crew extolls the virtue of living on the open ocean, where food literally falls from the sky in abundance.  There are some minor issues, like some of the film stock being ruined by water, and almost losing two of the crew because they misjudged how fast the raft was actually traveling, but they mostly stay pretty sanguine.  After all, it wasn't like they were completely adrift.  Onboard were five radios that kept them in contact with the outside world with regular frequency, and they had been supplied with MREs by the U.S. Army, eager to have test subjects on this new technology.

Parts of this film also verge into a colonizer mindset when they hit some of the inhabited islands.  And there's some footage of their interaction with the wildlife that could have benefited from modern understanding.  For example, we now know that whale sharks are filter feeders and -while gigantic- pose no real threats to humans, making the Kon-Tiki's crew's paranoia about being followed by one seem silly.  The whale shark was probably just curious and absolutely did not deserve to have some freaked out Norwegian stab it in the head with a harpoon.  The shark was fine but quickly abandoned its explorations.  Its smaller cousins were not so lucky, having been hauled up by the crew to die on the decks in the dozens, again under the misapprehension that shark = evil.

It's still an interesting and lively film, helped along by the droll English narration.  We were originally supposed to also watch the 2012 dramatized remake but it got dropped from the syllabus for time constraints.  This is free with Amazon Prime, so if you have a Prime account (or someone's access) and you really need a shot of the tropics during this long, cold winter, give it a watch.  It's only about 55 minutes and it won an Oscar for Best Documentary once.