Screens for Teens: "Ice Breakers" and "Olga"
On Sunday, Nov. 6, Harvard Art Museums presents "Ice Breakers" and "Olga," as part of their Screens for Teens series. Admission is free and seating is first come, first served. The screening will take place in Menschel Hall, and doors will open at 1:30 p.m. This series of contemporary and classic films is specially curated for teenagers in and around Cambridge. The selection, including both short and feature-length films, is meant to provide teens with an opportunity to watch work focused explicitly on their experiences. Covering a range of topics, emotions and nuances, these free films—depending on length and scope—will be followed by conversation with faculty from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.
In "Ice Breakers," Josh Crooks is a promising teen hockey star in a sport where Black players like him are chronically underrepresented. He learns that his unshakable passion is tied to a rich and remarkable heritage when he discovers the buried history of a pioneering Black hockey league in Atlantic Canada.
In Elie Grappe’s award-winning drama "Olga," shown in French, Ukranian and Russian with English subtitles, a talented young gymnast from Kiev, played by real-life former Ukrainian national team member Anastasiia Budiashkina, moves to Switzerland to pursue her Olympic dreams. The film follows 15-year-old Olga as she tries to make friends on her new team and adjust to life in her new home. As she relentlessly trains in preparation for the European Championships, her friends and family back in the Ukraine are taking to the streets in what would become known as the Maidan Revolution. Olga is left a powerless, distant bystander as her mother, an investigative journalist, faces danger and violence in her work challenging the brutal Yanukovich regime. While the historic events depicted in the film are intricately linked with the subsequent Russian invasion, providing rich insight into the current situation in the Ukraine, Grappe’s camera never strays from the point of view of a remarkable young woman struggling to find her way in the world.