HOLDING BACK THE TIDE Trailer: New Documentary Chronicles the Oyster as a Queer Icon

Premiering at last year’s DOC NYC, as well as numerous other festivals, Emily Packer’s documentary Holding Back the Tide gives a poetic look at the lives of oysters (a living creature) in New York City. While charting their presence in the city (including the pollution surrounding them, revitalization efforts, and fine dining), it also explores their gender-fluid nature – making a case for it as a queer icon. Grasshopper Film will release the documentary on Friday, Sept. 6th in New York (DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema) and Friday, Oct. 4th in Los Angeles’ Laemmle Theatres, before expanding to select U.S. cities.

Here’s the official synopsis:

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 open and carefully returned to sea. A chorus of farmers, diners, sous chefs, fishmongers, activists, and landscape architects colloquializes the oyster’s many life cycles. 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. 

Check out the trailer and poster below.

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