Wednesday, 28 October 2026 at 7 pm
Directed by: Robert Kramer
USA / 1969 / 128'
Language: English
Subtitles: Croatian
As part of a new edition of the Hall of Fame programme – a guide to the history of documentary film, we are screening the film Ice (1969), a radical political docufiction by the American director Robert Kramer. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, the film presents a dystopian vision of a fascist America in which a group of revolutionaries organise an armed resistance against an authoritarian regime.
Set in an Orwellian version of New York, Ice follows the daily life of a revolutionary group planning to overthrow a fascist regime, carrying out guerrilla attacks, smuggling weapons and forging unexpected alliances, all while trying to evade the repression of the secret police. The fictional war with Mexico serves as an allegory for the American intervention in Vietnam, and the revolutionaries' political debates, internal tensions and ideological conflicts shape a layered portrayal of the relationship between political beliefs and their practical application.
One of the most prominent figures of radical American cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Kramer merges elements of the science-fiction thriller with a documentary aesthetic, creating a politically engaged work that defies conventional genre boundaries. Filmed on black-and-white 16mm stock, Ice explores the contradictions of revolutionary action with a documentary immediacy, a fragmented narrative and a collage-like approach, while retaining an unexpected intimacy and melancholy. Its speculative vision of the future thus becomes a means of critiquing the American political reality of the time, but also a disturbingly relevant reflection of contemporary authoritarian tendencies. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described the film as a moving history lesson and the American equivalent of Jacques Rivette's conspiracy films.
After the screening, film critic and Dokukino presenter Dina Pokrajac will talk with Emini Bužinkić about the speculative and real forms of a fascist America, science fiction as a means of critiquing the present, depictions of the radical left on film, and the years-long struggles and transformations of political resistance.