{"id":1575,"date":"2014-02-07T05:33:57","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T13:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.244.209\/~canadiu3\/?p=1575"},"modified":"2014-04-05T19:17:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T11:17:14","slug":"3-oscar-nominated-filmmakers-credit-harvard-professor-robb-moss-for-inspiring-their-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/02\/07\/3-oscar-nominated-filmmakers-credit-harvard-professor-robb-moss-for-inspiring-their-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Oscar nominated filmmakers credit Harvard professor Robb Moss for inspiring their talent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robb<\/a>
Robb Moss. Screenshot from Vimeo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BOSTON\u2014Behind the spotlight on this year\u2019s Oscar nominees for best feature documentary is a soft-spoken and camera-shy film professor at Harvard who taught three of the directors in the 1990s, encouraging their work and inspiring them to greatness.<\/p>\n

Rob Moss, who has taught at Harvard for 25 years, says he\u2019s not surprised that Jehane Noujaim, Joshua Oppenheimer and Richard Rowley, all 39, have achieved individual acclaim. All three credit Moss with helping them develop their vision\u2014but he says humbly that he doesn\u2019t know what he did to inspire them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not something I planned or set out to do,\u201d Moss said. \u201cTeaching is a lot more about not knowing than knowing. It is about giving students the freedom to find out what filmmaker they want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowley directed the nominated film \u201cDirty Wars\u201d\u2014based on the book by the same name by Jeremy Scahill\u2014which looks critically at the involvement of the U.S. military in the Middle East. Oppenheimer, his former classmate and dorm neighbour, directed \u201cThe Act of Killing,\u201d a dark look into the mass killings of communists and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Noujaim, who graduated with Oppenheimer in 1997, directed \u201cThe Square,\u201d a detailed depiction of the Egyptian revolution from start to finish.<\/p>\n

Noujaim won the Directors Guild of America award in late January for \u201cThe Square,\u201d competing against all the Oscar-nominated films but \u201cDirty Wars.\u201d That could foreshadow an edge for her because in the last five years, four of the DGA-winning films for best feature documentary also won the Oscar in that category that year.<\/p>\n

Last week, \u201cThe Act of Killing\u201d won the London Critics\u2019 Circle Film Award for best documentary, a category added in 2011. No previous winners of the London award have also won Oscars.<\/p>\n

Nominated with the Harvard trio for the Oscar are Morgan Neville\u2019s \u201c20 Feet From Stardom,\u201d about the unsung backup singers behind such rock stars as Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Stevie Wonder\u2014and \u201cCutie and the Boxer,\u201d directed by Zachary Heinzerling, a glimpse of the 40-year marriage of New York boxing painter, Ushio Shinohara and Noriko, his former art student.<\/p>\n

Last month, \u201c20 Feet From Stardom\u201d won the 2014 Critics\u2019 Choice Award for best documentary feature\u2014putting it in good standing for the Oscars, too. Three of the five past winners of the Critics\u2019 Choice also claimed an Oscar the year they won.<\/p>\n

Moss, who is in his early 60s, is known in film circles for his 2008 film \u201cSecrecy,\u201d and his 2003 film \u201cThe Same River Twice,\u201d both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoss is not just a professor but also makes beautiful films,\u201d said Noujaim.<\/p>\n

Rowley said that although Harvard is not a renowned film school, he could not imagine going to a better place to hone his craft of filmmaking. \u201cRobb completely changed the way I shoot things,\u201d he said. \u201cHe taught me to take the camera off the track and fully embrace the hand-held esthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n

While at Harvard, Rowley and Oppenheimer became good friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lived down the hall from each other, cooked meals together and argued back and forth about films,\u201d said Rowley. \u201cIt is remarkable that our careers have evolved in parallel while still being thousands of miles apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oppenheimer was also inspired by Moss. He said professors like Moss and film professor Dusan Makavejev encouraged students to discover their vision, whatever it may be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned at Harvard how to cultivate a kind of sensibility where you form questions in cinematic form and answer those questions in cinematic form,\u201d he said, which is demonstrated in \u201cThe Act of Killing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJosh was intrigued with the world and the complexity of it even when he was an undergraduate,\u201d Moss said. \u201cHe was widely imaginative, the opposite of orthodox,\u201d and that shone in his nominated film, he said.<\/p>\n

Noujaim, who was originally in the pre-medical program at Harvard, said professors like Moss\u2014whom she considers to be a life-long friend and mentor\u2014developed her passion for film and influenced her decision to switch fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened at Harvard really set me on my path,\u201d she said. \u201cI took a lot of lessons from my early days with Robb Moss about the importance of collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noujaim, said Moss, \u201chas the fearless ability to find subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople trust her and respond to her and that allows her to get deeper into the world she is filming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another Moss protege and recent graduate, Damien Chazelle, 29, won the grand jury prize and the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival last week for his film, \u201cWhiplash,\u201d about a jazz drummer and his ruthless instructor. \u201cWhiplash\u201d is one of only two feature films Chazelle has made since graduating.<\/p>\n

And Moss continues to influence aspiring directors today.<\/p>\n

Kendra McLaughlin-Norton, 20, is a Harvard junior who is not surprised by the stellar success of Moss\u2019 students.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe shaped the way I look through a camera,\u201d said McLaughlin-Norton, who has taken three classes with him and is his advisee. \u201cI think of him every time I shoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moss, who will watch the Oscars anxiously from home, would not venture to suggest who will win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho wins doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir work is so wonderful that winning an Academy will not change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oscars, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, will air March 2 at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOSTON\u2014Behind the spotlight on this year\u2019s Oscar nominees for best feature documentary is a soft-spoken and camera-shy film professor at …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":1616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","mauthors-paige-sutherland","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}