Emilie Upczak

https://www.emilieupczak.com/#/silt/
Silt
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.

The Colorado River is in peril, due to the climate crisis in the West, the overuse of water and the lack of cooperation regionally. As residents of Colorado, home of the river's headwaters, we must work to preserve this precious natural resource.

Emilie Upczak is an independent filmmaker, a Rotterdam Producers Lab alumni and an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant recipient.

Emilie spent ten years in Trinidad and Tobago, where she made films and worked as the Creative Director for the trinidad+tobago film festival spearheading the Caribbean Film Database and the Caribbean Film Mart. Emilie’s debut narrative feature, set in Port of Spain, “Moving Parts”, premiered at the Denver Film Festival and is available through the films distributor, Indiepix. Emilie is currently on Fellowship with the Center for Humanities & the Arts, working with the Rare and Distinctive Collections at the University of Colorado Libraries to create a digital exhibition on the collection of Ann Roy, an American poet, mystic and feminist activist. She is also in development on her second feature film, a climate story, to be set in the near future on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. Emilie Upczak is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, and the Associate Faculty Director of the Brakhage Center for Media Arts at the University of Colorado, Boulder.