I first met singer/songwriter and filmmaker Emily Niebuhr online at a Folk Alliance virtual event. We’ve been emailing sporadically for a year now, as our schedules allow; we’ve made and cancelled several Zoom appointments to see each other’s faces talking. We’ll get there.

Emily is a globetrekker: She’s played the ECU Film Festival (in which she had a film) as well as Sundance Film Festival; Americanafest Nashville, a Texas tour as well as Tucson, AZ.

As I type, Emily is at FAI 2025 in Montréal, repping Alaska in song & taking pictures with “the fancy cam.” We wanted to put something together for Women’s History Month.

EN: I am completely humbled to have the opportunity to inspire other women artists! I want to encourage women to explore their own artistic wildernesses.

I also want to bring the joy of filming and beauty of Alaska to a wider audience so recently I’ve started to project Alaskan footage behind me at some shows.

me: How did filmmaking and songwriting become your passion? Do you have any other, maybe unusual, passions that also intersect?

EN: It all started years ago when I was grumpy after a breakup. My friends convinced me to buy a drone and taught me how to fly it. During COVID there wasn’t a lot to do so I’d hike or ski in the wilderness – sometimes 20 miles in a day – to film. However, I needed a hobby for when it was too dangerous to film so that’s how I got into playing music.

me: …and we found each other through Folk Alliance.

EN: I stumbled into the Folk Alliance International Conference without really knowing what I was getting into and I realized immediately these were my people. I’m also a meteorologist and have always been passionate about the weather. As an outdoor filmmaker, this really helps me plan for certain shots.

me: Do you find any parallels between meteorology and your creativity?

EN: Absolutely! I think both fields really focus on helping the other person. In Alaska, for much of my career, I’ve focused on helping to keep our brave pilots safe. They have to fly through some of the most dangerous conditions in the world. In music and film, we try to help people navigate through their own personal wilderness and not to feel alone during difficult times.

I think being a meteorologist improves my filmmaking because not only am I able to avoid potentially dangerous filming conditions, but it also helps me to be more aware of beautiful filming moments.

me: Please tell me about the intersection of songwriting and filmmaking. They’re both vocabularies for storytelling.

EN: When I write a song, a lot of the time I have the melody, words, and visual ideas simultaneously. I think most songwriters start with lyrics or a melody – but it all comes to me at once in a jumbled mess! As you would expect with any artist, these all evolve through rigorous musical, lyrical and video editing. As a result, I tend to produce fewer pieces than most artists since I’m working on all three at once.

me: Oh, yeah…all three at once. This happens to me a lot: different projects come to me at the same time, from the same source. My best example is an idea for a painting, then a poem that came from notes I took to remember the image, and a short story that my muse said I had to write while I was working on the painting. The title of the painting is Sundogs.

EN: That is fascinating! I’d taken some lessons in the past and it seemed that there was a specific formula to follow – write the lyrics, and then the music…so I assumed that’s how most artists took this on! I’m glad to hear there are other people like me and I’m not a crazy outlier!

Nature has a significant impact on me – my most recent song I wrote while watching the stars. In many films, the wilderness is often depicted as just background or as a one-dimensional dark entity for people to overcome. To me, wilderness is so much more than that – it is its own character and I wish to share that on film. So I don’t follow the tradition of storyboard filmmaking. I find it too audacious to go into the wilderness knowing exactly what scene I will take away that day. Instead I’ll go into a space in the wilderness and wait to see what story it has for me to tell – and I’m never disappointed!

Filming in the wilderness – especially when it can be -20F – has made me a more adaptable filmmaker. I’ve had to chase off bears, run from many moose, and faced frostbite. So while I encourage people to go into the wilderness, I also encourage people to be prepared and understand any risks. If you go wandering into bear country in your flip-flops you could end up on the menu!

me: What’s important about the theme of wandering in your films?

EN: I think one of the most important themes for me to convey in my films and songs is the importance of wandering for our soul. There’s so much to explore if we just step out and open our doors: a new shop – a new neighbor – a new mountain. Our society puts a significant emphasis on immediate results and success, but sometimes our greatest ideas come from pausing and opening ourselves to something bigger than we are.

I also try to convey that as artists it’s ok to wander in your art – these are just the beginning of important pivot points and flashpoints for inspiration. It’s also ok to wander away from a toxic place without knowing exactly where you are going – just get away!

me: How (much) does being identified as a woman impact the storytelling process?

EN: Being a woman filmmaker and songwriter impacts the sort of stories I feel compelled to tell. I want to reshape how women perceive and are perceived in the wilderness.

I asked ChatGPT: What are the top films for women in wilderness?  Most of the entries stated: “While the central character is a man, the themes of isolation and nature could resonate with women too.” I know many women and men who regularly explore and experience the tundra here, and are inspired by it. There are a lot more films that feature men in the wilderness than women. I just would like to show more women in the wilderness so that a girl growing up now could know that she can be a woman and be in the woods!

It also impacts how I choose to film. In most of my shots I deliberately hide my face. I want any woman who watches the film to realize that this could be them in the wilderness, that they can be out exploring and connecting with the wilderness and themselves in a new way. I’m also shy and more comfortable behind than in front of the camera, so this works on a philosophical level as well.

Subscribe to Emily’s YouTube page so you can get notified of new projects, like the one she’s working on with Chris Baron and Two Secrets in which she straps a GoPro to a model train. You can also follow her on Facebook or on Instagram @emmy_lost_in_space.

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer-review at Consilience Poetry Journal, or designing books for Igneus Press. Follow @DebsValidation on X and Instagram. Read her self-distractions at FolkWorks.org and JerryJazzMusician.com.