A towboat drifts down the Mississippi River, due for the port of New Orleans. The water, the banks, the bright lights of a port ahead; the lure of a coming paycheck and a home-cooked meal. This is the world of Barge. On board, dry land’s misfits find purpose and direction twenty-eight days at a time as the steady hands of an industrial ecosystem teeming with line boats, fleet boats, and a few million tons of cargo moved each year. A green deckhand following his father and grandmother into the family business. A former convict working his way upward job by job, in the hopes of being First Mate. A thirty-eight year veteran engineer in no hurry to retire. An ancient waterway pulling a double shift as the backbone of a national economy; a tangle of thick steel cables, tied together just right. As long as the boat’s moving, they’re making money. An intimate portrait of the machinery of American ambitions.
Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Dallas International Film Festival
Best Feature Documentary at the 2015 Crossroads Film Festival
Honorable Mention: Best Documentary at the 2015 Ashland Independent Film Festival
Austin Film Society Grant in 2013
Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant in 2012
Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund in 2011