Kristin Marguerite Doidge
“We fell in love with the movie? Sean Baker said when he took the stage at the Oscars on March 2, accepting the “Anora” Best Director Award.
Baker, who previously won two other Best Screenplay Awards and earlier in the evening, had been best edited for “Anora” (later earned history by winning the fourth best photo award), urging viewers and publishers to consider the importance of the “community experience” of the theaters in the world where the theaters are watching movies together. Host Conan O’Brien also invited viewers to enjoy the theater experience in his “Movie Building,” which included a fake ad from the radio earlier with a “big-screen iPhone.”
Aside from jokes, this year’s American Film Editor’s (ACE) “Invisible Art/Visible Artist” (IAVA) panel event also reflects the perspectives of genuine love and appreciation of film enriching and inspiring audiences, emotions highlighting all the achievements of Oscar Party Film Editors in the crowd involved. This popular event, which is celebrating its 25 years, is part of an editorial community’s efforts to educate professionals, students and the public on the art of editing) was held on March 1 at Regal La Live Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The guild sponsored a lively lunch after a panel discussion targeting nominees, board members and invited guests.
Ace Kevin Tent, vice president of the ACE organization, introduced the 2025 group, which includes this year’s nominees: Dávid Jancsó of HSE, “Barbarism” of HSE, Nick Emerson, Nick Emerson, “cendave”, Juliette Baker, and Welfare, who traveled to Los Angeles during the event and could not attend in person.
While Tent served as a member of the panel last year as a “reserved” editorial work, ACE President and Photo Editor Sabrina Plisco (ACE) served as moderator for the second consecutive year. She asked each nominee to reflect on what inspired them to engage in the film industry and how they discovered their passion for editors, their perceptions of the editorial power that shapes the film and influences audiences, and the nominated editors’ insights into the collaborative process of working with directors, including the challenges of long-term work. They also shared clips from the nominated film this year and advised aspiring editors.
For Jancsó, he grew up as a second-generation film boy in Hungary and knew from the start that he wanted to be an editor, although “my parents did do everything they could to keep me out of the industry,” he said. His father was the late film director and screenwriter Miklós Jancsó, and his mother was picture editor Csákány Zsuzsa.
But he went to film school anyway, and was one of two “movie lads” of his nine-man, who wanted to be an editor and understand its particularity. “We know what we are creating and why,” he added. He also noted that Hungary is home to the world’s last two film processing laboratories and continues to have a lively Arthouse production and post-production site that is suitable for both local and international production.
Similarly, Kerstein, after studying fine art at the University of Massachusetts at the University of Massachusetts, edited live in the vibrant independent films in New York in the 1990s, where he worked in printmaking, photography and painting.
“The most important advice I want to provide is watching movies.”
But it’s what he calls “Blind Skype Date” meeting with director Jon Chu about eight years ago, which will lead him to a long-term creative collaboration for the couple, including several highly acclaimed films.
“We fell in love with each other in the ‘crazy rich Asians’,” Kistan said. “It was a real brother…and then we worked together, and it was an incredible experience working in New York…I really wanted to create a musical before that, so it was a dream come true because after that, he said, I think ‘wicked’ was the next one. So of course, I was excited to be something that big because I was a big fan of this Broadway musical. I was a big fan of The Wizard of Oz.
Kirstan added that when he visited Universal Studios, he fell in love with the movie for the first time and witnessed the magic of the mechanical sharks that “chin” attacking the fisherman over and over again. He said that throughout the circle, a Universal Pictures executive recently told him that “Evil” was the largest film the studio has made, a huge work that includes building its own background in London, the suit spanning several sizes of football fields to create Chu’s Oz vision and forming years of dedication from members, as well as a team of captains, crew members and post-production.
“It’s really encouraging to know this impossible bar that Jon sets for all of us,” Kstan said.
In a previously recorded Zoom interview with Plisco, the Paris-based Welfling said she’s also enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the award-winning director and screenwriter Jacques Audiard since his directorial debut “See How They Fall” in 1994. Audiard, who directed “Emilia Pérez,” also comes from a film family like Jancsó—his father was the famous French director and screenwriter Michel Audiard.
“I met Jacques because he was an assistant editor like me in his twenties,” Foleylin said. “We worked in the same studio and we became very close friends…and then he became the director and he told me, ‘When I directed the first movie, you get it.’ So, since then, I’ve been involved in all his projects. I’m sure I won’t miss it.”
Emerson said it was a “taxi driver” shot that inspired him to become an editor. He began working in Dublin’s TV news, then Belfast, and has been working in London for the past 11 years, although his editorial work has often brought him around the world.
Emerson said he and German-born director Edward Berger have linked their attitudes toward the material to draw precisely on another American film, “Men of All Presidents,” and resist the impulse to stay away from the far-reaching impulse. He said he often remembers the advice of legendary editor Sam O’Steen “never stand out.”
As for his advice to emerging editors, Jancsó reminds viewers that if they are interested in learning and realizing great craft, they will watch more movies. “The most important advice I will provide and get is [to] Watch a movie,” he said. “Back to the past. Start with the beginning of the movie. I think that’s what helps you become a great editor. ”
Kirstan said it was a love for the work itself, which would get you through it, adding: “I know a lot of people don’t have jobs right now, but no one says artists can make a living easily…I’ve gone through a lot of recession, a lot of strikes, and I’ve been going for eight months to a year. But if you want to do that, you have to like it because it’s really a tough job, but it always makes sense if you can get through it…so I mean stick with it.”
