Emilie Upczak

Profile

Emilie Upczak is originally from the mountains above Boulder. She is an independent filmmaker, an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a Rotterdam Producers Lab alumni. Emilie has her MFA in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Emilie 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 “Moving Parts”, a human smuggling and sex trafficking film, set in the capital city of Port of Spain, was supported by the Trinidad and Tobago Film Commission. It premiered at the Denver Film Festival and is available through the film’s distributor, Indiepix.

In 2021, she co-directed an experimental short exploring the industrial sector of Denver and the wild spaces of Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The film was funded by Redline Contemporary Art Center and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. It was publicly projected onto the Colorado History Museum Building and 16th Street Clocktower by Denver Night Lights and also exhibited at Union Hall and Emmanual Galleries.

In 2022, she wrote and directed a narrative short film entitled “Silt”, a story of loss centered on the Colorado River, which premiered at the Independent Film Festival Boston where it won the special jury award and went on to win Best Film Score, Los Angeles Live Score Film Festival, the Audience Choice and Advisory Board Awards at the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival, the Narrative Jury Prize at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, Borders | No Borders, and a Federal Emergency Management Agency Climate Resilience Storytelling Award. “Silt” will be screened at the Smithsonian Institute Mother Tongue Festival in 2024.