Ice

‘Ice is the waking dream of a militant white urban group in New York into a future not far away,’ writes Peter Nau in the April 1971 film review. His text is entitled “New York nous appartient” - as in Rivette's Paris nous appartient (1961), the film's conspiratorial figures form a loose net, appearing and disappearing again. Modelled on sci-fi films such as Godard's Alphaville (1965), the urban guerrillas prepare for the ‘spring offensive’. Fake newsreels provide information about the global political situation; a violent uprising against the oppressive ‘system’ seems imminent. Ice began as a newsreel project, but internal resistance to the film's distribution sealed Kramer's departure from the group. Amos Vogel in Film as a Subversive Art: ‘As a microcosm of personalities, tendencies and problems of today's New Left, projected into a very possible future, the film deals with regional offensives, assassinations, terror and counter-terror, commitment, exhaustion and betrayal.’ (Volker Pantenburg)

Courtesy Cinémathèque française

Photo: Icarus Films