ABOUT THE FILMS
In 1978 Robb Moss filmed a group of friends, young river guides, on a 35-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, and he has kept filming them ever since.
RIVERDOGS (1982, 32 min.) is Moss’s original 16mm record of that summer on the Colorado River, a lyrical and unselfconscious portrait of youth and the canyon. RIVERDOGS contains nudity.
A short break follows.
THE BEND IN THE RIVER (2025, 83 min.) returns to Barry, Cathy, Danny, Jeff and Jim, now in their seventies. Moss weaves together footage from across their lives into a portrait of friendship and aging that is often funny and finally very moving. Executive produced by Frances McDormand and Joel Coen, the film premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival.
CONVERSATION WITH THE FILMMAKER FOLLOWS
Robb Moss joins Anne Marie Stein to talk about filming the same people across a lifetime, and what it is like to watch his friends, and himself, grow older on screen.
ROBB MOSS
Rudolf Arnheim Lecturer on Filmmaking, Harvard University
Robb Moss is a documentary filmmaker who teaches filmmaking at Harvard. His films include RIVERDOGS, THE SAME RIVER TWICE, which premiered at Sundance, and SECRECY and CONTAINMENT, both made with Peter Galison. He has been an advisor at the Sundance Institute Documentary Labs since their first year and has served on documentary juries at Sundance and many other festivals.
Moderator:
ANNE MARIE STEIN
Former Executive Director, Boston Film/Video Foundation
Anne Marie Stein is a Newton resident who led the Boston Film/Video Foundation from 1988 to 2001 and co-founded the Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema.
