MELT: the memory of ice
MELT: the memory of ice is a visually mesmerizing cinematic song cycle, a powerful and contemplative invitation to sit bedside in communion with our earth’s body melting and spilling through climate change. Created during a summer the composer/director spent in Greenland with her mother and 5-year-old daughter, the film slowly explores a spectacular river of icebergs, increasingly interrupted by flashes of memory. An immersive soundtrack rich with glimmers of sound — calving ice, reindeer bells, sled dogs — surrounds the spellbinding vocal ensemble Moving Star and a solo child reciting an unfathomable list of winter’s loss — flurries, ice skates, snow angels. The ice melts on. (4K, Color, Dolby Atmos sound)
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Betsey BiggsDirector
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Betsey BiggsWriter
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Betsey BiggsProducer
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Susan CapitelliProducerExposure (2022), Youth v Gov (2020)
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Jill MazurskyExecutive ProducerSchindler Space Architect (2024), Exposure (2022), Ravage (2019), David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019), Fiddlin' (2018), The Human Element (2018), Love Means Zero (2017), The Babushkas of Chernobyl (2015), Keep On Keepin' On (2014)
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Troy FairbanksDirector of PhotographyDevoted Limits (2018)
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Betsey BiggsMusic Composed ByThrough The Ice (2005)
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Sasha BogdanowitschVocals: Moving StarMeredith Monk, Songs of Ascension; Meredith Monk, Impermanence
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Emily EagenVocals: Moving StarJulia Wolfe, Steel Hammer; Sufjan Stevens, All Delighted People
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Tim KiahVocals: Moving Star
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Jeremy LydicVocals: Moving StarNick Brooke, Time and Motion Study
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Holly NadalVocals: Moving StarMeredith Monk, Songs of Ascension
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OnomeVocals: Moving Star
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Peter SciscioliVocals: Moving StarMeredith Monk, Indra's Net; Meredith Monk, Songs of Ascension
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Hazel BiggsSolo Vocalist
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Jeff CookRecording Engineer & Vocal MixRoomful of Teeth/Eve Beglarian, Rough Magic (Grammy); Defiance: Fighting the Far Right (2024);
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Michael HammondMusic Producer & Mixing EngineerRoomful of Teeth, Partita for 8 Voices Remixes; Sarah Kirkland Snider, Unremembered; Sarah Kirkland Snider, Penelope; William Britelle, Without Chasms; Annika Socolofsky, Don't Say a Word; CNN, The Assignment with Audie Cornish
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Sean WintersDolby Atmos Mix
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Peder MorgenthalerColoristFor Years To Come (2023), Sharon Ebadi: Until We Are Free (2022), The Holly (2022), Rook (2020), Silent Rose (2020), Classic (2019), Arkane (2017), Out Living It (2012), A Test of Wills (2009), Suburban (2008)
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Project Type:Documentary, Experimental, Feature, Music Video
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Runtime:1 hour 14 minutes
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Completion Date:September 6, 2024
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:Greenland, United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:1.85:1
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
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Denver Museum of Nature and Science IMAX (Digerati Experimental Media Festival)Denver
United States
September 14, 2024
Betsey Biggs is a composer and artist whose work connects the dots between sound, image, place and technology, and has been described by the New Yorker as “psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears.” For more than twenty years, she has composed music, created live multimedia performances, and created participatory art installations. She has collaborated with artists such as Jennie Livingston, So Percussion, and Samson Young, and her work has been presented at the Sundance Film Festival, MASSMoCA, ISSUE Project Room, and Hong Kong’s Videotage. She studied at Colorado College, Mills College and Princeton University, and has taught music, multimedia, public art, photography, and video at Brown University, RISD, and the University of Colorado, where she is currently Assistant Professor of Critical Media Practices.
I am primarily a composer and artist; this is my first feature film; I made it after wandering around the world’s most active glacier with my mother and 5-year-old daughter. As I struggle to give my child the same intimacy with the wild I’ve enjoyed, I have found myself wondering about melting ice: will there be winter in the world when she is my age? There are so many documentaries about the facts and figures of climate change out there, and I wanted to offer audiences something different: a glimpse at the experience I had in Greenland, the chance to simply sit, in the tradition of slow cinema, and be with the earth’s ice as it melts and spills its way through climate change, to witness their own feelings as music washes over them. I hope it resonates for you.