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With opening remarks from Melinda Loberg and Sandy Cannon-Brown. Followed by a panel discussion featuring Emma Green-Beach, Rick Karney, Paul Bagnall, Steve Kirk and Sandy Cannon-Brown and a reception featuring oysters from Cottage City Oysters, Tisbury Oyster Company and Spearpoint Oysters
Tisbury Waterways, Inc. (TWI) invites you to a screening of a new documentary film, A Passion for Oysters, followed by a panel discussion and oyster fest.
A film about oysters? Sure, oysters aren’t much to look at. You could say they are true and literal sticks in the mud. Yet these humble bivalves have inspired piracy, shooting wars and centuries of social and environmental conflict. All this ado about oysters is explored in A Passion for Oysters.
Sandy Cannon-Brown, a producer and the editor of A Passion for Oysters, is a resident of Vineyard Haven. She moved to Vineyard Haven in 2020 from the Chesapeake Bay, where she and her partners – writer Tom Horton and photographer Dave Harp – made many notable films about the Bay. A Passion for Oysters is their most recent.
The film, produced with the highest production values and an original music score, covers the history, life cycle, value of, and controversies about oysters. The film premiered at the Chesapeake Film Festival on Sept. 30, 2023. It will air on Maryland Public Television and other PBS stations and screen at other film festivals after the Island event. Among the comments from viewers:
“Superb film…a pleasure to view. Great photography
and video, but especially great interviews.”
“…the film does a great job of exploring the combined and sometimes competing interests of oyster restoration efforts by oyster farms, sanctuaries, scientists/environmentalists, and free-range watermen in the Bay. The film is very informative and includes a lot of great archival material covering the history of oyster fishing…”
“Terrific! A whole new appreciation for oysters. Very informative from so many perspectives. Well done. Thank you.”
Cannon-Brown has collaborated with Horton and Harp since 2015 when the focus of their first film, Beautiful Swimmers Revisited, was another shellfish, the blue crab. Their most highly-acclaimed film, High Tide in Dorchester, warns how climate change, erosion and rising seas threaten to devastate one of Maryland’s largest counties.
Tisbury Waterways, Inc. (TWI) is a citizen’s non-profit organization that serves as a steward of Tisbury’s waterways. TWI acts as a catalyst and advocate in support of municipal, educational and research programs designed to improve local marine water quality.
Watermen in Maryland still harvest oysters the way it’s been done for centuries – with hand tongs and mechanical dredges.
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