2-minute Ice Bears of the Beaufort movie trailer.               8-minute Ice Bears of the Beaufort short.


         Watch on YouTube instead                                               Watch on NYC NPR site instead

Site design & content ©2010 PolarArt Productions.  Updated 4/27/10.

Barter Island – a drop of land in the Arctic Ocean.


The rest of Alaska is a bush flight away. 

Canada:  a 70-mile boat trip. 

Prudhoe Bay lies ninety miles west. 

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? 

You’re inside of it.


Barter Island – home of Kaktovik, an Inupiat Eskimo village, pop. 300,

A whaling people, with ocean lives.


Home of the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears, living on the cutting edge of history.


Home of filmmaker Arthur C. Smith III, since 2004.  Witness the truth...

An Alaskan film bears witness to the truth.

s y n o p s i s


  1. It’s not a barren wasteland. 

  2. It’s not uninhabited. 

  3. It’s not a frontier waiting to be discovered. 

  4. It’s home.



  7. ICE BEARS OF THE BEAUFORT was filmed in one of the most remote and unforgiving places in Alaska.  It’s the creation of two resident independent filmmakers committed to replacing the abstraction of the Arctic with reality. 



  10. In the spirit of “bearing witness,” we made this film to share with people who may never see the Alaskan arctic for themselves.  When political discussion turns to industrializing this place, we want people to see whose home is at stake.

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t h e

A r c t i c

  1. f i l m  r e v i e w s



  2. “This exquisitely picturesque work picks up where ‘The March of the Penguins’ left off. 
    Magnificent scenery and radiant cinematography...”

    John Columbus, Founder/Director, Black Maria Film + Video Festival
    2009 Grand Prize - Documentary

  3. “A groundbreaking documentary...”
    KGO-TV ABC San Francisco

  4. “Without doubt, for me, one of the most moving, powerful, and compelling works of art I have seen this season... But don’t bring your Animal Planet-natural history museum-oh those cute white bears in the zoo- preconceptions to this sophisticated, complex film. You have to see it on the big screen...  You will never see, hear, or think about the arctic or polar bears the same way.”

    Patricia Zimmerman, Co-Director
    Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival

  5. “As a result of our developing environmental crisis, nature filmmaking has become an avenue for proactive resistance to the status quo, and those women and men who put their lives on the line to bring the realities of environmental change to us are heroes of this resistance and a new kind of cinematic avant-garde.”

    Scott MacDonald, US Film Scholar
    Hamilton College

  6. “It’s a wordless documentary following a bear and her two cubs for a year. The film makes the point very poetically about the change that is happening in the Arctic — without any narration.  The score, which is original, is beautiful as well.”

    Rachel Kaplan, 2009 DIrector, San Francisco Ocean Film Festival
    2009 Best of Festival - Wildlife

  7. “Stunning, unrushed cinematography and editing; natural sound with no narration; and a spare music score by Patrick O’Hearn transform this film into a meditative plea to protect one of the most awesomely powerful—and comically playful—animals on earth.”

    Sidney Hollister, Selection Committee
    San Francisco Ocean Film Festival

  8. "It's an amazing piece. The cinematography is just bears being bears.  [Filmmaker Arthur C. Smith III] lives up there...and has a unique opportunity to capture them on film as opposed to film crews going in for a week or two at a time."

    Butch Allen, Director
    Alaska Ocean Film Festival

 

  1. Imagine that what you think you know about American polar bears is wrong.  Imagine that most of what you hear about polar bears and climate change in Alaska is missing the point.  Imagine a film that irrefutably documents the cognizant and social nature of polar bears, redefining the popular misconception that they are hostile and solitary. 

  2. ICE BEARS OF THE BEAUFORT witnesses the truth of polar bears never before seen on film.

  3. Created by Alaskan filmmakers living among the hunters of the Beaufort Sea-- the Inupiat Eskimos and the polar bears-- this non-narrated documentary bears witness to the precious and unprotected home that supports a thriving yet threatened way of life.

  4. Do Americans have the will to preserve this natural sanctuary?
    “Witness” ICE BEARS OF THE BEAUFORT and decide for yourself. 

  5. Non-narrated, with an original score by Nashville's Patrick O'Hearn.