Ukrainian Cinema Club: Film Screening | Fragments of Ice

Ukrainian Cinema Club: Screening of the documentary "Fragments of Ice" at MACA (Amsterdam)

📅 Date: 18:00, February 21, 2025📍 Location: MACA, Amsterdam

The Ukrainian Film Club at MACA (Amsterdam) invites you to a special screening of the documentary "Fragments of Ice", director Maria Stoianova. A deep, personal insight into Ukraine’s transition period – from the final years of the Soviet Union to the first years of independence.

The film is composed of archival VHS footage shot by the director’s father – a champion figure skater who toured the world in the 1980s and 1990s as part of the Ukrainian Ensemble Ballet on Ice. His video diaries, recorded on fifteen tapes, capture his foreign tours, filmed outside the USSR despite constant KGB surveillance, as well as intimate moments from family life.

 “You cross the border and start breathing,” he remarks in one of the videos upon leaving the USSR.

Fragments of Ice follows director Maria Stoianova as she grows up in her father’s home videos, while also tracing the parallel collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s journey towards regaining independence, and its transition to a market economy - a momentous shift accompanied by “inaccurate expectations of freedom.” These expectations are reflected in the glamorous footage of the West, shot by Stoianova’s father on tours to Canada, Greece, Australia, Hong Kong, and Finland, which starkly contrasts with the home video footage of peeling walls, collapsed ceilings, and cockroaches back at the family flat in the USSR.

Stoianova also conducted archival research into the Ballet’s records from the Soviet period, a time when “documents ignored reality, while reality tried to ignore the official documents.” As the frozen state of life in the USSR begins to thaw in the late 1980s, her father performs abroad in a show referred to as Glasnost on Ice. Reality starts to seep into the Ballet’s records as inflation in Ukraine skyrockets to 10,000% - a record for a country not at war.

Following the breakup of the USSR and Ukraine’s independence, Stoianova’s father is offered a job at a theme park in Blackpool, UK. There, he continues filming on a borrowed camera, capturing his parents as they experience a newfound sense of both freedom and uncertainty. Wandering through quaint English streets, no longer watched by the KGB, they realize that “here, you have to rely on yourself and make your own decisions about tomorrow.”

Fragments of Ice captures both the broad sweep of history and its impact on real lives, culminating in a new upheaval - the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The End of History never happened,” Stoianova muses. “It froze and caught up with us years later.”