Ice Grave

For 33 years, one of the great scientific mysteries remained unsolved: what became of the three men aboard a hydrogen balloon bound for the North Pole?

Ice Grave seeks to reconstruct an answer, drawing us deep into the Arctic at the height of the heroic age of exploration. On July 11, 1897, three men departed from Svalbard and were never seen again. The film unfolds as a speculative journey through the archive, weaving together recovered journal fragments and salvaged photographs from glass negatives discovered at a ghostly base camp on Kvitøya in 1930, where the ill-fated expedition finally came to an end. Guided by Bendik Giske’s eerie music, this solemn and humbling cinematic time capsule lingers in uncertainty, revealing the collision of scientific ambition and human vulnerability against nature’s elemental, uncompromising force.

– Thomas Streekstra

This screening is presented in collaboration with Noordelijk Film Festival

TALK 

Prior to the film, Jurjen Enzing, coordinator of the Frisian Film & Audio Archive, will give an introduction on archival material. He will explore how preserved materials can be brought back to life, how their stories can be told and honored, and how archival footage can be used as a source for new and inspired artworks.

This programme is organised as part of the cine-poem project Nieuwe Gronden, in collaboration with Wintertuin, the Regional Archive Nijmegen, the Northern Film Festival, and the Frisian Film & Audio Archive.