Emilie Upczak

Professor Upczak’s work reflects her interest in the cultural landscape, and in highlighting female driven narratives with representation both in front of and behind the camera. Her films are rooted in Neo-realism, and hybridity, blending fiction and non-fiction techniques, and highlighting actors and non-actors. She makes narrative, experimental, and non-fiction films and works with archival footage and collections. Her films range from feature length narratives to public video projections to digital exhibitions. She is an award-winning filmmaker, a Rotterdam Producers Lab alumnus, and an Andy Warhol Foundation grant recipient. Upczak spent ten years living in Trinidad and Tobago, where she began making films and worked as the Creative Director for the trinidad+tobago film festival spearheading the Caribbean Film Database and the Caribbean Film Mart. Her debut narrative feature is Moving Parts, a human smuggling and sex trafficking film, set in the capital city of Port of Spain. She is currently in post-production on Leo Sacer, a social documentary that delves into fraught interactions between residents of a small mountain community and a relocated mountain lion. And is in development on her second feature film, Silt, a climate justice story, to be set in the near future on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.