Location United States (US)
Description
In the Keeping takes as its subject the practice of keeping and cultivating koi fish, following them as they are hatched, harvested, raised, and dispersed across various human contexts. A dynamic landscape of often-invisible processes and infrastructures comes into view, revealing the entanglement of nature and humanity.
Each chapter of the film explores a different dimension of koi keeping: breeders use the bodies of koi as living canvases for elaborate patterns and colors; veterinary scientists employ CT scans to generate detailed, cross-sectional views of the fish; judges from an international koi organization describe the art of photographing champions to highlight their award-winning traits; and university researchers record the beating heart of a small fish under a high-powered microscope. These episodes are rendered through close-up 16mm cinematography, alongside experiments with underwater shooting, time-lapse photography, and soundscapes that fuse electronic music with field recordings.
Project Status
We are honored to have received support from the LEF Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and Vassar College. This funding has enabled us to research and shoot over the past two years at the following locations:
Currently, we are in the final stages of shooting and will soon begin the process of post-production. Your contribution to this campaign will help fund:
Emily Drummer – Director
Emily Drummer is a filmmaker whose process-driven work is rooted in immersive fieldwork and historical research, reimagining cinematic conventions to craft meditative worlds that are deeply thought, felt, and sensed.
She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from MacDowell, New York State Council on the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, and the Flaherty Film Seminar. Her short films Field Resistance (2020), Histories of Simulated Intimacy (2017), and Behind the Torchlight (2015) have been showcased by venues including Art of the Real at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Block Museum at Northwestern University, London Short Film Festival, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, among others. She received her MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa and her BA from Hampshire College.
Felipe Troya – Producer
Felipe Troya is a writer and film producer.
He received a BA in Literature from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University.
In 2016, he co-founded the Ecuadorian film production company Angamarca Cine. He co-wrote and produced two feature films: La muerte del maestro, (2018, International Film Festival Rotterdam) and Al Oriente (2021, Venice International Film Festival), as well as several shorts films.
Jake Meginsky – Composer and Sound Designer
Composer/filmmaker Jake Meginsky, a New Music USA award winner and Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in both music and film, has collaborated and performed with an extraordinary range of musicians including Milford Graves, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Kim Gordon, Vic Rawlings, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Paul Flaherty, John Truscinski, Arthur Brooks, and Bill Nace.
In 2018, he directed and produced the award-winning feature film Milford Graves Full Mantis.
José María Avilés – Editor
José María Avilés is an Ecuadorian film director, producer and screenwriter. He studied film at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires and obtained a Masters Degree in Film Creation from the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastián.
He wrote and directed the fiction feature film Al Oriente (Venice International Film Festival, 2021), the hybrid film La muerte del maestro (International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2018) and the short films La enorme presencia de los muertos (San Sebastian Film Festival 2019), Speed Paradise (BAFICI, 2015), Conversaciones en el jardín (BAFICI, 2014) and Ricchieri (Ciudades reveladas, Buenos Aires, 2013).
Monika Uchiyama – Field Producer
Monika Uchiyama is an artist and filmmaker based in Tokyo. Her films have screened at festivals such as Art of the Real, Japan Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival, Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, as well as group shows at ICA Philadelphia and Goethe-Institut China. She lived in Los Angeles as a child and attended middle school and high school in Tokyo. As a teen, she began working as a translator and interpreter for music publications and has since continued to freelance as a Japanese-English translator in the fields of art and culture. She received her BA from CUNY City College in 2015 and her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018.
Adrián Balseca – Graphic Designer
Adrián Balseca was born in Quito, Ecuador, and lives and works in Buenos Aires. He conducts interdisciplinary, site-specific interventions and actions, produces video documentation and photographic series, and builds sound installations and sculptural objects.
He has participated in international exhibitions such as the São Paulo Biennial (2021), Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2018), and Cosmopolis at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019), among others. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museu da Cidade, São Paulo (2021), Museo de Arte Precolombino Casa del Alabado, Quito (2017) and at the galleries N24, Quito (2021), Madragoa, Lisbon (2019, 2016) and Ginsberg, Lima (2019). In 2013, he won the inaugural Prémio Brasil Emerging Art Prize, at the Center for Contemporary Art Quito (CAC) and in 2014 he received the Premio Paris at the 12th International Cuenca Biennial: Leaving to return. He was awarded the annual Grants & Commissions Program 2015, at the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO).
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