Fragments of Ice

Maria Stoianova's father, a figure skater with the Ukrainian Ballet on Ice, bought his first camera in 1986, the year the filmmaker was born. By combining letters from her parents with these family films, shot until the mid-1990s and painstakingly edited to rewrite history, the filmmaker has carved out her own path. Maintaining a considered and impressive distance, she paints the portrait of a man who dreams of freedom, and through him of the artists who, along with dissidents, were the first to rub shoulders with the capitalist West – a symbol of freedom and individualism – including the ambiguity associated with these notions that was confirmed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In these formidable archives, two universes intersect; the intimate world of childhood and the exciting, vibrant world of live performance. As a sensitive reflection on the substance of the images emerges, so too the position of Ukraine is sketched out – caught between a Russian stranglehold and a consolidation of the expression of national sentiment towards the West. A historical, cultural and personal perspective on the geopolitical present.
Emilie Bujès

Fragments of Ice, 2024
The Second Wave, 2020
Above The Styx, 2019
Ma, 2017
Exarch, 2014