Filmoteka Muzeum

Trotsky's Ice Pick is an attempt at a reconstruction of a photograph in which Mexican police officers demonstrate the tool that Stalin’s agents used to murder Leon Trotsky. The reconstruction was carried out 150 times (the exact number of pages in Libera’s book Trotsky's Ice Pick), with all due effort to bring it as close to the original as possible. Yet, each of the photos fails in a certain way and each is slightly different. Upon leafing quickly through the book, the figures bend aside and move like plants in time-lapse shots. Trotsky's Ice Pick can be regarded as a sort of “mockumentary”, which relates to the essence and possibility of re-enacting an original event.
 

(AH)