ICE (1969)

Ice

Directed by Robert Kramer.
US 1969, 16mm, b/w, 135 min.

Kramer’s first film to hybridize fiction and documentary imagines an alarming near-future in which the U.S. has become a repressive police state. Made in a pseudo-verité style, Ice matter of factly documents the preparations for a violent overthrow of the state by a group of young New York City radicals. Featuring animated debates about politics and tactics and vivid “footage” of the radicals’ daily lives, Ice initially drew controversy in U.S. leftist circles for its apparent endorsement of armed struggle. While Ice is a meditation on the mesh and clash of experience and ideology, today itseems both a work of fierce political commitment and an ambiguous statement about the dissent.