PETER L. STEIN
  • About
    • Bio, Honors & CV
    • Contact
  • Film / Media
    • TV / Film Productions
    • Film Festivals
    • Museums & Online
    • Consulting
  • Onstage
    • Interviewer / Moderator
    • Teacher / Lecturer
    • Writing & Performance
  • News & Views
  • Calendar

Documentary Editors in the Director's Chair...Hooray! (and Dammit!)

9/20/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
Scanning the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival lineup, I feel like a proud uncle. Back in the 1990s, I had the foresight to hire (and the pleasure to work with) three terrific documentary editors on the public television series Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco. Now all three editors are getting recognized as multi-talented filmmakers in their own right, and, in a kind of festival trifecta, all of them are featured this year as DIRECTORS of fascinating documentaries, which I urge you to catch next month in Mill Valley (or elsewhere on the festival circuit).

Maureen Gosling—the sensitive and intuitive longtime editor of the seminal films of the late Les Blank—was the editor of the first documentary in the Neighborhoods series, The Mission, back in 1994. Now she has both edited and co-directed This Ain't No Mouse Music! The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records, a fond tribute to that pioneering American roots music label.
Picture
Picture
Dawn Logsdon—whose gifts with archival imagery and footage made her an ideal editor on The Castro—not only edited but also co-directed the exuberant profile Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton, an eye-opening portrait of the complex filmmaker/poet and quintessential Radical Faerie.  If you missed it at Frameline this year, the film is itself a big joy.

Joe De Francesco brought his passion and convictions as an editor to two episodes of the Neighborhoods series, both Chinatown and The Fillmore. (Showing he has either exquisite taste or a tinge of masochism. Or both.)  I think back in the 90s he was already working on a crazy project to stage an epic poem about the Civil War with inmates at San Quentin. He pulled it off…and now has crafted a moving documentary of the performance and the experiences of the inmates as they encounter a poetic drama that has much to say about race, love, violence and the American character. Don’t miss the world premiere of “John Brown’s Body” at San Quentin Prison.
Picture
Seeing these three talented editors take wing in new roles is, of course, thrilling to me (I am after all the poster child of artist-wearing-many-hats), but also, I confess, dispiriting. I mean, why do they need to leave the pigeonhole that I have happily consigned them to? They are damned good documentary editors—a rare and ornery breed. Once they’ve flown the coop and started to soar into the rarefied air of directing, well, they may never come flying back into the dank editing suite. Some great documentary editors—Jeffrey Friedman, Yael Hersonski, Debbie Hoffmann—flew away and seem rarely tempted back.

Then again…documentary directing/producing is not exactly a paradise. Perhaps after a few miserable dawn-to-midnight shoots…or the 20th rejected funding proposal…or the 50th headache over uncleared music rights…perhaps the pure content focus of editing will lure them back to their chair.

That’s a long shot. Try as one might to pigeonhole these rare birds, the fact is, talent will out.  And with these three talents—not to mention a name like Gosling—they are bound to fly.

2 Comments
katy kavanaugh link
10/9/2013 12:46:44 am

Peter, it's a thrill to read your prose, so gracious and constructive. Happy that I can find them regularly here on your blog.

Reply
Peter L. Stein
10/9/2013 05:19:37 am

Thanks Katy. Hoping to write a bit more regularly here, but sporadic may need to sufffice for now...

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Peter L. Stein

    Archives

    November 2021
    June 2021
    September 2020
    June 2020
    June 2019
    June 2018
    August 2017
    June 2017
    June 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    May 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013

    Don't miss Peter's next post!

    Receive new entries automatically. Type your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.