Just In!
Holding Back the Tide Q&As: Director Emily Packer will be in town for limited Q&As! Weds Oct 2nd, 7:30pm at Monica Film Center with director Emily Packer, moderated by Michelle Cheripka; Thurs Oct 3rd, 7:30pm at NoHo 7 with director Emily Packer, moderated by 'Ascension' filmmaker Jessica Kingdon; Sat Oct 5th, 4:30pm at Royal with director Emily Packer, moderated by UCLA's Head of Documentary Professor Kristy Guevara-Flanagan; Sun Oct 6th, 4:30pm at Royal with director Emily Packer, moderated by filmmaker Sue Ding.
Holding Back the Tide
Feels like both an elegy and a prophecy, looking toward both past and future to imagine what kind of possibilities oysters represent.
-- Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
Holding Back the Tide
This impressionist hybrid documentary traces the oyster through its many life cycles in New York, once the world's oyster capital. Now their specter haunts the city through queer characters embodying ancient myth, discovering the overlooked history and biology of the bivalve that built the city. As environmentalists restore them to the harbor, Holding Back the Tide looks to the oyster as a queer icon, entangled with nature, with much to teach about our continued survival.
A woman swallows a pearl. A subway car falls to the ocean floor. A deluge bursts through the cracks of New York City. In every borough, oyster shells are pried apart and carefully returned to sea. A chorus of farmers, diners, sous chefs, fishmongers, activists, and landscape architects colloquializes the oyster’s many lifecycles. These educational snapshots about the bivalve’s ecological role, mating habits, communal living, and historical presence take on new meaning and flirt with the mythic. Underwater dances and poetic addresses blend the human and non-human worlds. The oyster as a water filter, carbon capturer, storm barrier, and habitat maker transcends its environmental promise and becomes a queer icon of New York City’s unlikely survival story.
Retracing cyclical ecologies for the largest metropolitan area in the United States calls upon an existential reimaging of a sustainable future. Out with the narratives of bootstraps and capitalist urban individualism; in with the water-bound, the intergenerational, the queer collectivity. Once New York City was built by the oysters. Now, it is built anew.
"A testament to the power of cinema." - POV Magazine
“A quirky, lyrical love letter to oysters in NYC, this engaging documentary plumbs the history of the bivalves, their pollution-fueled decline, and their inspiring revival, finding poetry and charm in an unlikely subject” - Indiewire
Official Selection, Reeling Chicago Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Film Forward Competition ~ Official Selection, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Metropolis Competition ~ Official Selection, DOCNYC
A woman swallows a pearl. A subway car falls to the ocean floor. A deluge bursts through the cracks of New York City. In every borough, oyster shells are pried apart and carefully returned to sea. A chorus of farmers, diners, sous chefs, fishmongers, activists, and landscape architects colloquializes the oyster’s many lifecycles. These educational snapshots about the bivalve’s ecological role, mating habits, communal living, and historical presence take on new meaning and flirt with the mythic. Underwater dances and poetic addresses blend the human and non-human worlds. The oyster as a water filter, carbon capturer, storm barrier, and habitat maker transcends its environmental promise and becomes a queer icon of New York City’s unlikely survival story.
Retracing cyclical ecologies for the largest metropolitan area in the United States calls upon an existential reimaging of a sustainable future. Out with the narratives of bootstraps and capitalist urban individualism; in with the water-bound, the intergenerational, the queer collectivity. Once New York City was built by the oysters. Now, it is built anew.
"A testament to the power of cinema." - POV Magazine
“A quirky, lyrical love letter to oysters in NYC, this engaging documentary plumbs the history of the bivalves, their pollution-fueled decline, and their inspiring revival, finding poetry and charm in an unlikely subject” - Indiewire
Official Selection, Reeling Chicago Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Film Forward Competition ~ Official Selection, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Metropolis Competition ~ Official Selection, DOCNYC
Genre
Documentary,
New York City,
Environment,
Women and Film,
LGBTQ+,
Food
Runtime
77
Language
English
Director
Emily Packer
Awards:
Winner, Official Selection, Reeling Chicago Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Winner, Film Forward Competition ~ Official Selection, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Winner, Metropolis Competition ~ Official Selection, DOCNYC
Nominee, Official Selection, Reeling Chicago Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Nominee, Film Forward Competition ~ Official Selection, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
Nominee, Metropolis Competition ~ Official Selection, DOCNYC
Nominee, Audience Award ~ Best Documentary Feature, L.A. Outfest
MOREOpening at
Monica Film Center on Oct 2nd
NoHo 7 on Oct 3rd
Royal on Oct 4th