MELT: The Memory of Ice
Directed by Betsey Biggs
2024 | Documentary | 1hr 14m | USA
Film director Betsey Biggs spent a summer in Greenland with her mother and her five year old daughter, exploring the Greenland Ice Sheet. Through the personal experience of this musician, artist and mother, we see and hear the melting of Arctic glaciers in real time. The effect is stunning.
This documentary premiered at the Denver Experimental Media Festival in 2024 and was shown at the SF Green Festival in 2025. In one critic’s words, MELT: The Memory of Ice is “a visually mesmerizing cinematic song cycle,” and so much more.
Betsey Biggs holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and works as an assistant professor at University of Colorado Boulder.
High above the Arctic whiteness, we are impressed by the “ice castles”, part of the glacier that first covered Greenland more than two million years ago. It looks as though it will last forever. Slowly the cameras come closer and we see a spectacular river of ice bergs — the effects of ice calving, where large chunks of ice break from a glacier and fall into the water. We hear the loud cracking sounds, see the huge waves.
The director’s point of view is that rising air and ocean temperatures are causing rapid glacial retreat. Scientific research supports this view.
To accentuate the richness of the complex icy vastness, the director features sounds of peregrine falcons, purple sandpipers, and willow ptarmigan. A vocal ensemble that accompanies the visuals — Moving Star — brings a haunting quality to the soundtrack, a meditation on what was once something thought to exist in perpetuity.
Most poignant is the voice of a child reciting all that we will miss and all we may experience as the glaciers disappear
Quick flashes of abundant animal life and of human presence stand in contrast to the timelessness of ice sheets. As the cameras tilt slowly down the length of an ice berg, we are startled to see bubbles forming at water line, where the glacier is indeed melting.
Two thirds of the way through the film, Moving Star begins multi-level chanting about melting of ice, carbon deposits, arctic circle temperatures. Certain years flash by, highlighting emissions, industrial revolutions, wars, ozone layer issues.
Most poignant is the voice of a child reciting all that we will miss and all we may experience as the glaciers disappear: ice flows, snow flurries, ice skates, snowshoes, white out, blizzards, black ice, hoar frost, avalanches, snow drifts, sled dogs, wind chill, snow angels, polar bears.
Betsey Biggs’ concern is clear. How will Earth’s population fare without the cooling effects of glaciers? The time to examine the issue is now. She dedicates this film to “Saving Winter”, and to her family.