Greta Snider’s 2025 film, In the Maritime Frequencies, proposes to approach climate change and its attendant crises from a context of the hyper-localized; in a particular stretch of San Francisco shoreline, and in the deepest imaginations of its residents. The project was created using celluloid film, hand-processed using developers and pre-developers mixed from the area’s bay water, ubiquitous fennel, and by-waste of detergents that outflow there.
The location is a spit of land at the city’s southeastern shore; a place with remarkable evocations for the temporal nature of climate awareness.
One can see the past in the looming relics of the old Navy yard and the fragments of tombstones in the riprap; hex tiles and bathroom fixtures routinely work their way to the surface of this former landfill. In the present, this locale is one of the few remaining undeveloped public spaces in a city stealthily choked by private parks. And of course we see the future, as irrepressible fennel, mallow, and poppies explode across the ground right up to the oily sand.
This film explores the possibility for emotional representations of climate change, with reference to Susan Sontag’s 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster,” Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, and Dr. Kimberly Nicholas’ nonfiction publication Under the Sky We Make (2022), each of which draws a particular line from climate disaster to human psyche.
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Greta Snider utilizes a combination of original and archival material to create nonfiction art cinema. Snider’s films, stereoscopic performances, and installations use the materiality of motion pictures to reshape themes of memory, loss, and personal histories in a more intimate, affective experience. Snider teaches experimental filmmaking at San Francisco State University, where she is faculty advisor to The Archive Project.