Editors
Interviews - Editors
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“The Entry Point to a Story Is So Delicate”: Editor Maya Maffioli on Beast
Maya Maffioli and Michael Pearce were classmates at the National Film and Television School in England. They now join forces as editor and writer/director, respectively, of Beast, a romantic psychological thriller that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017. Maffioli has edited more than two dozen short and feature-length projects since 2007. Below, she discusses balancing the film’s many tones, the striking lead performance from Jessie Buckley (Taboo) and why “a good love story on screen is always unbeatable.” Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that […]
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“What Would it Be Like to Start over from Scratch?”: Editor Toby Shimin on This Is Home
Tobi Shimin has edited more than two dozen documentary projects going back to 1988. In 2015 she cut the Sundance doc How To Dance In Ohio from director Alexandra Shiva, who returned to Sundance this year for This Is Home. The film, which won the audience award in the international documentary lineup, tells the story of four Syrian families as they move to the United States as refugees. Below, Shiva discusses the task of shaving 300 hours of dailies down to a 90 minute feature. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors […]
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“How Do You Make Sympathetic an Intentionally Enigmatic Character?”: Editor Mark Yoshikawa on The Catcher Was a Spy
Mark Yoshikawa worked as an assistant editor for a decade before he began editing films and TV series full time. This decade he’s edited three films by Terrence Malick, the first two installments of the Hunger Games franchise and three episodes of HBO’s Westworld. His latest film, The Catcher Was a Spy, tells the real-life story of Moe Berg, a professional baseball player who became a spy for a U.S. intelligence agency during World War II. The film stars Paul Rudd, in a rare dramatic, along with cast of heavy hitters: Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce and Paul Giamatti. Below, Yoshikawa speaks with Filmmaker about […]
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“You Can’t Just Slash and Burn through a Cut”: Editor Michael Taylor on A Kid Like Jake
Michael Taylor has been editing the work of America’s independent filmmakers since 2004. Taylor has cut films for Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange), Rick Alverson (Entertainment) and Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet), to name a few. In 2017, he edited two films to appear at the Sundance Film Festival: Elvis & Nixon and Deidra & Laney Rob a Train. He returns to the festival this year having edited A Kid Like Jake, a New York-set drama starring Claire Danes, Jim Parsons and Octavia Spencer. In the interview below, Taylor goes in depth on how he broke into editing, his love of New […]
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“A Fresh, Intimate Glimpse of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life”: Editor Carla Gutierrez on RBG
Carla Gutierrez began her career as a documentary editor in 2006 on Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. She has since edited the Oscar-nominated short La Corona, the Emmy-nominated feature Reportero and When Worlds Collide, which won the Special Jury Prize for Best Debut Feature at Sundance in 2016. She returns to the festival having edited RBG, a documentary on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen. Gutierrez speaks with Filmmaker below about blending new and archival interviews and how RBG is a “love story of a woman who strived to accomplish great things and the man who […]
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“I’m a Firm Believer in the Card Wall”: Viridiana Lieberman on Editing The Sentence
In 2017, Viridiana Lieberman had two documentaries premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival: I Am Evidence, a feature on police departments’ handling of sexual assault cases, and Love the Sinner, a short on the Orlando nightclub shooting of 2016. She begins 2018 having edited The Sentence, which premieres in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The Sentence tells the story of director Rudy Valdez’s sister Cindy, a woman who received a draconian 15-year prison sentence for crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend. Below, Lieberman speaks with Filmmaker about why editing “this film has become one of the most powerful experiences of my life.” Filmmaker: […]
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“Are People Eating Popcorn or Using Their Mind?”: Editor Alex Kopit on Dead Pigs
Alex Kopit served as an assistant editor on past Sundance premieres Be Kind Rewind (2008) and The Messenger (2009). He returns to the festival in 2018 as the editor of Dead Pigs, the debut feature from writer/director Cathy Yan. The film is a mosaic of stories in modern-day Shanghai connected by a mysterious occurrence: a stream of floating pig carcasses. Below, Kopit discusses editing the film so that “the various stories could interweave and support each other.” Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your […]
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“Seeing the Seams Is a Part of the Art”: Editor Taryn Gould on Narcissister Organ Player
Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who appeared on America’s Got Talent to, as her bio puts it, “trouble the popular entertainment and experimental art divide.” Her feature film debut, Narcissister Organ Player, is a hybrid of performance art film and personal documentary on her relationship with her family. Narcissister tapped filmmaker Taryn Gould to edit the film. Below, Gould discusses the importance of in-progress screenings, how editing the film has impacted how she thinks about her mother and the question of whether or not to show Narcissister’s face in the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
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“It Came to Symbolize a Whole Era”: Editor Andrea Lewis on Studio 54
Andrea Lewis served as a co-editor on Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, a 2016 documentary on urban activist Jane Jacobs. The film earned strong reviews for director Matt Tyrnauer, who would hire Lewis to edit his next documentary: Studio 54. The film tells the story of the rise and fall of the iconic ’70s nightclub through the lens of its founders: Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell. Lewis spoke with Filmmaker before the film’s premiere at Sundance about the task of giving shape to this archival-heavy project. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What […]
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“We Cut Countless Versions of this Scene”: Editors Bing Liu and Joshua Altman on Minding the Gap
Joshua Altman cut his first Sundance-bound documentary in 2009 with We Live in Public. The film – Altman’s first as an editor of documentary features – went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at the festival. Since then, Altman has cut five more docs to premiere at Sundance: The Tillman Story (2010), Bones Brigade: an Autobiography (2012), We Are The Giant (2014) and, in 2018 alone, both Kailash and Minding The Gap. The latter film he cut with film’s director, Bing Liu. Liu himself appears in the film among a trio of friends who bond over skateboarding in their Rust Belt town. Below, […]
