Lending his eye to the visions of others
What did you do this summer? It’s been a common refrain across campus in recent days. The answer for countless students and faculty is that they traveled or just relaxed over the past few months. But many also incorporated work into their schedules, including the chair of Harvard’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Robb Moss, who devoted some of his downtime to helping filmmakers realize their dreams. For the past 12 years Moss has headed west in June to the Sundance Institute, a Provo, Utah-based nonprofit that supports independent storytellers in theater and film. The institute, founded by actor-director Robert Redford, is also the umbrella organization for the popular Sundance Film Festival, a launching pad for everything from indie favorites to feature-length documentaries to mainstream blockbusters. Over the course of eight days, Moss and fellow directors and editors from the United States and around the world gather at the institute to...