Media Release 03/07/2020
Max Quinn’s Life of Extremes
For the past two years I have been working on a book based on my life as a polar filmmaker. I am pleased to announce that the work will be published by Exisle Publishing and available worldwide from October 2020. It is extensive and contains over 250 photographs and maps that cover my career from my first polar filming experience in 1991 through to my retirement, 30 years later. My book will appeal to a very wide range of readers; from those interested in factual and natural history filmmaking, biography, adventure, travel, exploration, polar history and science… with an emphasis on global warming.
This work isn’t just another story of a polar explorer struggling against the elements, but is about my job as a producer, director and cameraman of many films set in the extremes of the Arctic and Antarctic.
My life as a polar filmmaker began with an assignment that took me away from home into the frozen wastes of Antarctica for 11 months. My task was to produce the first film to cover the entire life cycle of the emperor penguin – the only bird to breed in the depth of a polar winter where the temperatures can plummet to minus 50 degrees Celsius. This involved travelling out to the Cape Crozier colony, made famous by Captain Scott’s team who, in 1911, endured the famous ‘Worst Journey in the World’. My own experience mirrored that of the old explorers in many ways, as I made 12 separate and dangerous filming excursions that have remained untold until now.
After my winter experience with the penguins, I have chosen to specialise in polar films and have been responsible for more than 12 productions set in and around the Arctic and Antarctic regions that have included filming expeditions, sled dog racing, Arctic and Antarctic science cruises, Greenland ice coring, polar bear research, Eskimo whaling and Sami reindeer herding.