Holding Back The Tide

This impressionistic hybrid documentary takes a close look at the oyster, a gender-fluid bivalve and a once-important economic engine for New York City. The film looks at the history of the oyster in NYC, its life-cycle and biology, the ecology of New York harbor, and attempts to repopulate the dwindling delicacy. The oyster’s gender-fluidity is a thematic thread, as we find it taken up as a queer emblem; meet a queer oyster farmer; and see it situated as a model of the kind of continual care that we must afford each other for continued survival. Just like the oyster, director Emily Packer’s fascinating experimental documentary is not just one thing or another–it’s a resonant collection of threads that offer a compelling exploration of the unassuming mollusk.