As a director/filmmaker, I would say that one of the most important influences has been my time as an editor because it is in the editing that stories are shaped. Wrestling with dramatic structure and story arcs has informed every decision I make as a director when I'm in the field.
My life in film actually began with my love of books. I mean, what is a book other than a movie that unspools in your imagination?
In college I studied literature with the desire of becoming a poet. But after I got my first still camera suddenly images became as important to me as words. In the meantime, of course, I was going to the movies every weekend with my boyfriend and falling in love with the French New Wave--Truffault, Varda, Roehmer. In my senior year I took a film class at Columbia and I was hooked-- I went to NYU Film School to get a masters degree and in a way, that's where my life began-- total immersion for two years.
In so many ways, my life has been a series of fortuitous encounters--meeting the right people at the right time. I met two people who became mentors while I was at NYU--Leo Hurwitz (Native Land, etc) from whom I learned to edit, and Paul Caponigro, the great still photographer. And of course, several fellow students with whom I forged life-long friendships; I made three films with Anne Belle, the last of which, SUZANNE FARRELL, ELUSIVE MUSE, was nominated for an Academy Award.
The next fortuitous encounter came David Maysles hired me as an assistant editor on something Muffie Meyer (a year ahead of me at NYU) was editing. I worked freelance at Maysles Films Inc for the next 20 years. It was there that I met Susan Froemke and made some of my favorite films—from CHRISTO IN PARIS to LALEE’S KIN, LEGACY OF COTTON.
And it was at Maysles that I fell in love with verite filmmaking and the strange beauty of capturing real people in actual situations unfolding, undirected, in front of the camera.
