Alternate Routes: Film on Ice
January 1, 2010
Volvo wheel loaders harvested ice from Sweden’s Torne River for
a giant movie screen made of ice.
Photo credit: Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions.
Image courtesy of Ice Hotel, Jukkasjärvi,
Sweden.
Last
November, film fans watched a feature film on a screen made entirely of ice at
the Stockholm International Film Festival.
Harvesting the ice for the screen was no easy feat. Two Volvo wheel loaders—an
L70 and an L50—were used to harvest the ice slabs. The ice had to be carved
from Sweden’s Torne River
in March 2009, when the temperature was minus 11.2° F.
“The harvesting involves attaching a large chainsaw with a hydraulic engine to
the tractors so that they can carve the ice,” says crea-tive director Arne
Bergh. “Then the tractors drive the ice to our storage facility on the shore of
the Torne River, which is kept at a constant
temperature of 23° F.”
After it was constructed, the ice screen weighed around 11 tons and measured
16.4 feet wide and 9.8 feet high. Now that’s a silver screen like no other.
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