NATURE OF ART, ART OF NATURE. Last night I attended two screenings. First I saw South, the 1919 documentary about the Shackleton Expedition to the Antarctic. It opened a free series of silent movies (with live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra) at the World Financial Center. After that, I made my way to the Film Forum to see Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (2000).

South combines stunning adventure footage with stereotypical Edwardian propaganda trumpeting the pluck and glory of the Shackleton expedition while suppressing nearly all of the harrowing details that eventually led its leader to consider it a journey through Hell. Much time is spent covering the dog team that traveled on the 22-month expedition, but from this documentary you would never know that the men eventually shot and ate their canine companions. Nor is there evidence of what prompted the trip's cinematographer, Frank Hurley, to write that, as conditions worsened, his fellow adventurers “conducted themselves in a manner unworthy of gentlemen & British sailors” and suffered "temporary aberration, walking aimlessly about; others shivering as with palsy.” (Perhaps such aspects are covered in the longer versions of the film, which last more than 80 minutes. This print appears to have been the US restoration, which clocks in at only 53 minutes.)

The Shackleton team hoped to traverse Antarctica but settled for emerging alive after months of icebound immobility. Behind the story as told in South is the tale of how the footage itself survived. In order to bring it home, Hurley had to rescue it from a plunge into icy water as well as a protective burial under the snowdrifts of Elephant Island. After Hurley gave up his motion picture camera and hundreds of negatives to lighten the team's burden as the situation worsened, he rationed his use of still photographs to document the latter part of the mission. (One can see and read more about this at this Kodak website.)

The precious footage preserved in South offers impressive examples of adventure and nature photography. Hurley must have been very resourceful (and perhaps deceptive) in placing his camera in front of sleds and the ship Endurance to show them moving ahead on their journey. Perhaps most memorable are his strikingly-lit images of the Endurance slowly icing over after it was fatally trapped in what Shackleton called a "jigsaw puzzle" of crushing Weddell Sea ice.

When I trudged through the cold to see Rivers and Tides after South, I didn't expect the two films to have much in common. Andy Goldsworthy, the focal point of Rivers and Tides, is no Arctic explorer. He's a soft-spoken artist who creates works of environmental art in his adopted Scottish hometown and other locales around the globe. His creations include cairn-like sculptures, serpentine stone fences, and fiercely-colored arrangements of autumn leaves.

Yet, as I watched this fine if slow-paced documentary (made by Thomas Riedelsheimer with great sympathy for his subject), I couldn't help noticing some parallels. Like Shackleton, Goldsworthy relies on photography as a record of his work, which is often created in near-isolation. Without such a record, much of what Goldsworthy creates would be extremely difficult to visualize. And both sets of images invite contemplation of the power and beauty of nature.

The Endurance team emerged from Antarctica with a photographic record of the awe-inspiring icescape that engulfed the ship. Goldsworthy's work communicates a similar vulnerability in milder circumstances. (Manipulating icicles and rough bracken takes a toll on his fingers, but at least he doesn't lose toes to frostbite.) His dome of sticks slowly unravels as the tide carries it away. His hanging network of sticks collapses moments before its completion. And even though one of his gingerly-stacked rock-cairns might prove somewhat durable, his ice-cairn seems as doomed in its setting as the Endurance was in the Antarctic.

Goldsworthy struggles as he creates his works, yet they are infused with a Zen-like tranquility. Minor frustrations aside, he accepts and even welcomes the fact that his materials may not always behave as he might prefer. (His attitude is reflected in the title of one of his books: Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.) In contrast, the Shackleton team comes across as having been more concerned with conquering nature. Whether there is much of a difference between "conquering" nature and "collaborating" with it is a mystery to me.