Fragments of Ice

A gentle hypnotic journey through the VHS archives of the (post-)Soviet figure skater who toured the West in the 80s and 90s. Years later, his daughter follows these videotaped memories to reveal a story about maturing: of herself, her family, and her society.

«I had over 30 hours of video material to work with. Roughly speaking, there were about 15 VHS tapes that my father had shot over 9 years. The tapes were gathering dust for quite a while, as we hardly ever watched them with my family. I always thought that the footage from my father’s tours was so boring. And then one day, I decided to watch it anyway and came across a recording of an argument between a “communist” and a “capitalist” on board a plane bound for Hong Kong. What a lovely scene that was! And so I watched the rest of the videos. I was thinking about how their meaning had changed—for all of us, and for my father, in particular. I also felt some invisible tension between the footage from the past and the enormous changes that had happened to us over the years (it was around 2019 at the time). So I was selecting material for the film,

hoping to understand our path from point A to point B. After 2022, it became clear that we were all already at point C, and this, of course, also influenced some of my choices.

Generally speaking, I would start from the material itself (and the feelings that it evoked in me) and then move toward its meanings, not vice versa. It never happened that I was looking for images to illustrate a story or a statement. Rather, the images suggested a path for me to follow.»

— Maria Stoianova