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.

Filmmakers expected to attend for live Q&A.

Director Biography

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 currently serves as Assistant Professor of Critical Media Practices. Current projects include feature music-film MELT: The Memory of Ice, web-based speculative geo-sculpture We Are Here FM, a digital sonic memorial , Pulse Memorial, and an international collaborative radio collective, The Conduction Series.