Short Film
10’ / 2022 / US / Drama
English & Navajo with English Subtitles
A botanist grieving the death of a beloved aunt, travels alone to northern Mexico, where she is nourished by images of the last trip they took together traversing the Colorado River.
Writer, Director, Producer Emilie Upczak
Producer John Otterbacher
Cinematographer Nancy Schreiber, ASC
Actor Morningstar Angeline
Instagram #siltthemovie
Support Provided by the Walton Family Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, New Mexico Film Office, Center for Humanities & the Arts, CU Boulder, Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, CU Boulder, SAGindie and Helix Collective Music Connect, Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Partners include the Sonoran Institute, Lo-Fi Productions LLC, Full Spectrum Features, Redline Contemporary Art Center, Flashpoint Chicago, a campus of Columbia College Hollywood, Mimesis Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media, CU Boulder, Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, CU Boulder.
Filmed on Location in the State of New Mexico
Photo credit: Laura Conway
Digital Exhibition
The Rare and Distinctive Collections at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was gifted Ann Roy’s collection of work in 2012. The materials within the collection cover Roy’s life as a girl in Tulsa, Oklahoma; as the wife of an historian writing about Ute Territory; as an expatriate living in Mexico and raising two sons; as an instructor at Ivan Illich's center in Cuernavaca, and as a feminist working to bridge the cultures of Mexico and the United States.
Through a Fellowship from the Center for Humanities and the Arts and the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship, and a grant from the President’s Fund, Emilie created an open-source Digital Exhibit, geared towards artists, academics, and general audiences.
Narrative Feature
72’ / 2017 / T&T, US/ Drama
Writer, Director, Producer Emilie Upczak
Producer John Otterbacher
Cinematographer Nancy Schreiber, ASC
Synopsis
After the death of her father, Zhenzhen is smuggled to the Caribbean island where her brother, Wei, works in construction. Wei gets her a job at a restaurant, but when the smuggler demands more cash, Zhenzhen is forced into a compromising position. Help comes unexpectedly from Evelyn, who runs an art gallery in the neighborhood—but the contrast between the dark rooms above the restaurant and the blindingly white gallery calls everyone’s innocence into question.
Available on Amazon
IMDB
With a knack for storytelling, director Emilie Upczak has effectively employed an ever-consequential female gaze to look into the subject matter; and in the process, while dissecting the system of sex trade, she succinctly puts her point of view as a strong undercurrent of the narrative.
Manoj Barpujari --fipresci
Night Lights Denver is a collection of light and projection-based art installations throughout Downtown Denver.
August 2021
“The Controlled Wild” is a film that explores human industry, expansion, boundaries, public and private land, wildlife, and wildlife corridors in the west. The film visually explores the tensions inherent in the intersection of the natural world and human industrial endeavor. Made with artist, Nicholas Emery.
This film explores human industry, expansion, boundaries, public and private land, wildlife, and wildlife corridors in the west.
The idea originated as paintings by Nicholas Emery, which articulate contemporary urban realities that are themselves the legacy of historical industrial decisions that began in the late 1800’s in the west. In these paintings oil refineries, power lines, railroad lines, buildings, and barbed wire are juxtaposed with vast sprawling prairies, buffalo, elk, and wolves, that causes a dualistic tension.
Emery began collaborating with filmmaker Emilie Upczak, who herself was making experimental shorts, and asking questions about identity and the land.
Together they work to visually explore the tensions inherent in the intersection of the natural world and human industrial endeavor.
Sound Design by Leland Burchmore
Funded by INSITE, an initiative of RedLine Contemporary Art Center and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Partners include the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge and the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.
Night Lights Denver is a collection of light and projection-based art installations throughout Downtown Denver.
May 2023
"Silt'' is a meditation on the Colorado River corridor through the Grand Canyon. These moving images were collected over the course of a 10-day white water rafting trip in June 2023. Only 1% of the 5 million people who visit the Grand Canyon each year go below the rim. "Silt" invites the viewer to experience spaces along the Colorado River that are rarely seen, inaccessible by road or plane.
A Super 8 film collaboration between Nicholas Emery and Emilie Upczak that explores the industrial sector of Denver and the wild spaces of Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
Francesa Woodman, 1976
Project Director for Caribbean Film Database (CFDb) – the largest single source of information on films produced in and about the Caribbean, defined here as the insular Caribbean plus Belize, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. As of its launch in September 2015, the CFDb houses information on more than 900 films from the English, Dutch, French and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The project was initially supported by the ACP Cultures+ Programme, funded by the European Union and the website is updated and maintained by FILMCO. https://cfdb.online
Review of the film “Eat, for This Is My Body”, directed by Michelange Quay. Written for the CRB: Caribbean Review of Books. 2008.
Filmmaker Magazine
by Dan Mirvish and Emilie Upczak in Festivals & Events on Mar 4, 2019
https://filmmakermagazine.com/107038-a-guide-to-caribbean-film-festivals/
This documentary short “wining” as a dance language with a history and identity born out of the Caribbean experience. In particular, it looks at the body in motion as well as elements of Trinidadian society that are represented in the way people dance and the various ethnic influences on the dance itself.
Dancing Deities is a documentary short that explores the music, dance and mythology of a rural Orisha community in Trinidad and Tobago.
The city streets of Port of Spain, and its varied cast of characters are the backdrop for this spoofy Trini-style-neo-noir. Philo, an expat detective turns to his previous partner Monique for help in solving a current high profile kidnapping case. But where this leads them is to the past, and an old rift between them regarding the disappearance of her brother, which Philo seeks to mend.
