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Bridging the gap between underground agit-prop and creative independent cinema (as well as blurring the line between drama and mockumentary), Ice is set in an unspecified time in the early '70s, when the United States has become involved in an unpopular war against Mexico (a clear analogy to the Vietnam war) and the Federal Government has stepped up internal security at the expense of individual freedoms. A handful of radical left-wing organizations have formed a loose alliance with the shared goal of bringing down the State and launching a guerilla revolution in America. Rather than mapping out the full game plan of the radicals, or detailing their full grievances against the federal government, Ice instead focuses on the nuts and bolts of the political underground -- strategy meetings, smuggling fugitive radicals from city to city, establishing safe houses, obtaining data on police and military activities, staging violent actions, trying to encompass the goals of a number of disparate groups in a united front, activists demanding their parents take care of wounded comrades, and weary organizers easing their tensions with drugs, alcohol, or sex. Written and directed by political filmmaker Robert Kramer, a founder of the leftist film collective Newsreel, Ice was shot on a budget of only 12,000 dollars (most of which came from a grant from the American Film Institute), and features a primarily non-professional cast.