OFF-SITE @ Peak Design NYC Store (241 Lafayette St.)
MDC x Peak Design present: Representing Nature: Director & Collagist G. Anthony Svatek in Conversation with filmmaker Emily Packer
May 25, 2023@ 7pm
Tickets: FREE
Maysles Documentary Center and Peak Design present director & collagist G. Anthony Svatek in conversation with Emily Packer on digital and cinematic representations of nature, expanding definitions of “environmentalists” and Svatek’s body of work. Svatek will share scenes from his films and collages exploring themes of increasingly mediated representations of nature.
This event is a fundraiser for Svatek’s forthcoming film, HUMBOLDT USA, which is fiscally sponsored by Maysles Documentary Center, an experimental documentary about the legacy of 19th century queer naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, and contemporary environmental conservation efforts in three places across the US named for him.
Donations are tax-deductible through Maysles Documentary Center and donors will receive one of Svatek’s collages of their choosing.
A selection of Svatek’s upcoming work HUMBOLDT, USA will be screened followed by a discussion between himself and filmmaker Emily Packer.
Having grown up at the foot of the Austrian Alps, G. Anthony Svatek is deeply awed by the living world, and the way people’s understanding of nature is informed by our increasingly technological and urban lives. He is based in New York City. Amongst others, his work has been shown at the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Prismatic Ground, and DOCNYC, and has been published by Harper’s Magazine. He’s received grants and support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and is the recipient of the New Visions Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. @gasvatek on instagram.
Emily Packer (she/they) is an experimental filmmaker and editor with an interest in border culture and geography. They were a fellow in the 2018 Collaborative Studio at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, and is a proud alumna of the anomalous Hampshire College where she now teaches digital editing. Her directorial work has been screened across the country, including at Anthology Film Archives, BlackStar Film Festival, DOCNYC, and others. Emily’s short film “By Way of Canarsie”, which she co-directed with Lelsey Steele, was a part of the inaugural Dedza short film collection “Who Will Start Another Fire” and is now available to stream on the Criterion Channel. She is currently directing a feature length hybrid film about oysters as queer environmental heroes in New York City, called “Holding Back the Tide”, which is supported by NYSCA and the Sundance Institute. As an editor, Emily recently cut two feature films including Noah Schamus's forthcoming “Summer Solstice”, an interpersonal trans drama set in upstate New York, and “Sound Spring”, an experimental anthology film about residents’ historical entanglements with Yellow Springs, Ohio. In addition to her editing and directing work, Emily serves on programming committees for film festivals in New York City and guest-curated the “Coastal Knowledge” series for the Rockaway Film Festival in 2021. Emily collects voicemails for future use; consider yourself notified.
