Q&A with Duke and the Buffalo director Alfredo Alcantara and subject & executive producer Duke Phillips, Mending the Line director Steve Engman and subjects Frank & Jeanne Moore, and 14.c subjects Kai & Connie Lightner!

Whether a boundary is real or imagined, crossing over is usually left to mavericks, visionaries, and the exceptionally brave. The lead characters in these three documentaries all cross different kinds of boundaries. In 14.c, a young black athlete excels in a sport that normally has little diversity: climbing. Duke from Duke and the Buffalo is a rancher who has made an alliance with a large conservation group. Frank Moore envisioned returning to fly-fish in France 60 years after landing on the beaches of Normandy, and his dream became a reality in Mending the Line.

14.c
George Knowles, USA, 2014, digital projection, 9m
Climbers all have a story about how they got started, and 14-year-old Kai Lightner’s introduction is particularly striking—and not only because he’s a brilliant climber. Much like Tiger Woods in golf or the Williams sisters in tennis, he could change the demographics of climbing. This film isn’t about race so much as it’s about family. His single mother has become his regular belay partner, one who also makes sure he maintains straight A’s in school. It’s clear that she wants what’s best for her son, and if that means spending hours with her hands on a belay device and her neck craned upward, so be it.

Duke and the Buffalo
Alfredo Alcantara & Josh Chertoff, USA, 2013, digital projection, 16m
Duke is a cowboy. The buffalo are part of the largest conservation herd of bison in the United States. Every year, Duke organizes a roundup of theses buffalo to inspect the health of the herd and yield income to sustain the Nature Conservancy–owned ranch where the buffalo roam. It turns out that bison aren’t as easily herded as cattle, and each year the roundup tests a lot of cowboy mettle.

Mending the Line
Steve Engman & John Waller, USA, 2014, digital projection, 48m
In 1944, 20-year-old Frank Moore landed on the beaches of Normandy. Crossing through the occupied French countryside, the young soldier daydreamed about coming back in peacetime to fish the bucolic streams. After the war, he returned to the States, married, started a family, and built a life centered around fly-fishing—but he never made it back to those streams in France. Until 2014. Now 90 but with the energy of a far younger man, Moore completes his dream with his wife and son by his side. This extraordinary story of a dream deferred, and ultimately fulfilled, proves that the scars of the past can be healed. Mending the Line was a 2013 Mountainfilm Commitment Grant recipient.