Editors
Interviews - Editors
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“Accessing Their Intimacy with Respect”: Editor Sofia Subercaseaux on Dina
Four years ago, Sofia Subercaseaux was using YouTube tutorials to teach herself how to edit a feature film. She has since gone on to edit Nasty Baby, Christine and now Dina, the new documentary from Mala Mala directors Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini. Dina documents the lives of Dina and Scott, a couple very much in love but with profound complications when it comes to physical intimacy. Before the film’s debut at Sundance 2017, Subercaseaux spoke with Filmmaker about how she broke into editing, working with two directors and the task of shaping hours of documentary footage into a final narrative. Filmmaker: How and […]
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Editor Azin Samari on Sundance Surfing Documentary Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
Editor Azin Samari has cut everything from reality TV shows like The Bachelorette and The Hills to award-winning documentaries such as The September Issue. For her latest feature, Samari edited Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, a documentary on the celebrity surfer from director Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam). We spoke with Samari before the film’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Below, Samari speaks about her previous work with Kennedy, her love of Thelma Schoonmaker and cracking the veneer of a media-savvy figure like Hamilton. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
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“Chronic Illness Doesn’t Lead to Tidy Endings”: Editor Kim Roberts on Unrest
Jennifer Brea had a challenge: to make a film from bed. Brea was a PhD student at Harvard when a sudden illness left her bedridden. She sought to create a documentary portrait of her experience and found support from labs at Sundance, IFP and elsewhere. She premiered Unrest, her debut film, in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Kim Roberts, an editor and writer on the film, spoke with Filmmaker about what drew her to the project and finding the right tone for a story this personal. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What […]
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“Editing Is an Unending Series of Difficult Decisions”: Editor Peter Kinoy on 500 YEARS
For director Pamela Yates and her colleagues at Skylight, 500 YEARS marks the end of a documentary trilogy on Guatemala. The film follows When the Mountains Tremble (1983) and Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011), both of which screened in previous years at the Sundance Film Festival. Veteran documentary editor Peter Kinoy edited all three films. Below, he discusses Skylight’s unique model as both a human rights organization and a film production company. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Kinoy: I […]
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“The Horror of Modern Warfare”: Editor Joe Klotz on The Yellow Birds
French filmmaker Alexandre Moors made his feature debut in 2013 with Blue Caprice, an acclaimed indie inspired by the 2002 Washington, DC sniper attacks. He returns to Sundance (where Blue Caprice premiered) in 2017 with The Yellow Birds, an Iraq War drama screening in competition. Moors hired Joe Klotz to edit The Yellow Birds in part based on his affection for The Paperboy, one of three Lee Daniels films Klotz has edited. Below, Klotz discusses how he and Moors balanced “the fragmented nature of time” in the script with their mandate to tell a coherent narrative. The Yellow Birds will screen six times during the […]
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Writer/Directing/Editor José María Cabral on Sundance Prison Drama Woodpeckers
Dominican writer/director José María Cabral has made several feature films at the age of just 28. His latest, Woodpeckers (Carpinteros), tells a love story inside the Najayo Prison in the Dominican Republic. As he’s done on most of his features to date, Cabral served as the editor on Woodpeckers. Below, Cabral discusses the challenges of editing this film, which relies heavily on a form of prison sign language (or wood-pecking) for communication. Woodpeckers premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to […]
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“A Huge Historical Project”: Editor Kim Miille on Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities
MacArthur Fellow Stanley Nelson has devoted his career to documentary explorations of the African American experience. The 65-year-old director/producer has made films on Marcus Garvey, the Freedom Riders and the Black Panthers. His most recent film is Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities, which premiered this week at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Nelson hired editor Kim Miille to cut the film. Below, Miille shares her thoughts on historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), making archival photos and letters cinematic and her origins as an editor. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
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Directors Saschka Unseld and Lily Baldwin on Editing Sundance VR Experience Through You
Saschka Unseld and Lily Baldwin explore the phases and facets of love in Through You, a dance-infused VR piece that premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Unseld is an animator who directed the Pixar short The Blue Umbrella and is a cofounder of Oculus Story Studio, a VR media company. Baldwin arrived at filmmaking by way of dance, having worked with everyone from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet to David Byrne. As a creative challenge, the two decided to edit Through You themselves. Below, Unseld and Baldwin discuss the roughly 150-200 hours they spent editing a 14-minute VR experience. Filmmaker: How and why did […]
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“An Act of Resistance against the Flux of Capital”: Editor Yael Bitton on Machines
First-time director Rahul Jain made a strong impression in 2016 with Machines, his documentary portrait of a massive sweatshop in Sachin, India. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and made its U.S. debut this week at Sundance. Praised for its visceral, experiential depiction of manual labor, the film provides a rare glimpse into the textile mills where many of our products originate. Jain hired the Paris-based Yael Bitton as one of multiple editors to give shape to his harrowing footage. Bitton spoke with Filmmaker before the film’s five Sundance screenings about Machines‘ unconventional narrative structure and […]
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“The Unconventional Structure We Wanted”: Editor Katie Flaxman on Killing Ground
Katie Flaxman has edited 35 shorts, TV series, fiction films and documentaries in the past 12 years. Her most recent feature, Killing Ground, made its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this week. A violent thriller from director Damien Power, the film tells the story of a nightmarish camping trip in the Australian woods. Below, Flaxman discusses the film’s non-linear structure, her techniques for “storyboarding” a film in the editing suite and the importance of POV in thrillers. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that […]
