The Films of Robb Moss
Robb Moss is a beloved documentary filmmaker who has mentored generations of other filmmakers for four decades. Many of them credit him as the key figure in how they think about story, structure, and the ethics of pointing a camera at real life. Robb is also a filmmaker of the highest order who is treasured especially for this trilogy of river films which follow the lives of five friends from their twenties into the seventies, a meditation on time, friendship and the arc of lived lives. His films toggle between the topical and the personal. Africa Revisited (1981), Secrecy (2008), and Containment (2017) explore racial complexity, government secrecy and nuclear waste, while Riverdogs (1978), The Tourist (1991) and The Same River Twice (2003), explore youthful extravagance, infertility/adoption, and the move from youth to middle age. He has been a creative advisor at the Sundance Institute’s doc edit labs since their inception in 2004, and taught filmmaking at Harvard University for the past 40 years where he is a former chair and current Professor in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies.
Upstate Films is honored to host Moss for a weekend dedicated to some of his most noteworthy films.