Camping on a Floating Ice Floe: Anton Pankov's Don River Film

A small group of friends, their camping gear and a slab of ice drifting down a Russian river: Anton Pankov's short film "MEN vs OFFICE – сплав на льдине" ("rafting on an ice floe") swaps the office for a floating campsite on the Don River in Voronezh Oblast. Seen from a distance, the whole party fits on a pale island of ice surrounded by dark open water.

Anton Pankov's ice-floe film

Anton Pankov is a Russian photographer and filmmaker who worked with the production studio Tramway Media and is also known for wedding photography. He uploaded the film to YouTube on 23 February 2014. In Russia that date is Defender of the Fatherland Day, popularly celebrated as Men's Day, which fits the playful "men versus the office" title.

The film follows the group as they settle on the floe and drift with the current, alternating close shots of everyday camp life with wide views that show just how small their platform is on the open river.

Video: MEN vs OFFICE – сплав на льдине, published by Anton Pankov (Антон Панков).

The Don River in winter

The Don is one of the great rivers of European Russia. It rises near Novomoskovsk in Tula Oblast and flows 1,870 km south to the Sea of Azov, passing the cities of Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don. Its basin covers more than 440,000 square kilometres.

In central Russia the river freezes over in winter. When temperatures swing around zero in late winter and early spring, the ice breaks into floes that drift with the current, and on a calm day a large floe can look as solid as a riverbank. That moment of break-up is what Pankov and his friends turned into a trip.

Ice-floe rafting, a Russian winter stunt

Riding a piece of drifting ice is a known daredevil pastime in Russia, and similar videos appear most springs, sometimes with picnics, barbecues or even wakeboarding behind the floe. They are also a serious headache for the rescue services: on Russian lakes and seas, emergency teams regularly have to pick up ice fishermen whose floe has broken away from the shore, sometimes hundreds at a time.

Enjoy this one from the sofa: drifting ice can split, turn over or ground without warning, and the water beneath it is close to freezing.

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