Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

Presenting the craft of documentary editing to 6th graders at SPARK! event

It was a thrill and a joy to recently premiere Israelism and Ivan Doig: Landscapes of a Western Mind back to back at the 20th Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. While I’ve worked on films that have played there over the years, I hadn’t been back in person since A Will for the Woods played there in 2014. It was a wonderful week of seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and being inspired by a number of amazing films.

I began premiere night by sitting with the whole Tikkun Olam team (the collective behind Israelism), colleagues like the extraordinary editing consultant and exec producer Brian Kates, and some extended family.

Then in sub-zero temps and through “hellgate” winds, I hustled over to another theater to find a seat in the dark and soak up audience reactions to Ivan Doig. It was incredible to return to my in-person screenings – my first since pre-pandemic, and to see these films get a proper send off into the world.

The next day, I was honored to join the festival in their educations partnership with SPARK! to talk to all of Missoula’s 6th grade classes! I joined other filmmakers as we each covered a distinct aspects of documentary filmmaking, mine being editing. I showed clips from the Montana-based Charged: The Eduardo Garcia Story, and spoke about why different scenes were edited with different pacing, why some were stripped down and some amped up, how we approached married raw in-the-moment documentary footage with stylized recreations, and our intentions behind portraying a real person’s story with which we had been trusted. To be honest, even with two world premieres, that 10 minute presentation was the part I was most nervous about, but the kids were unbelievably amazing, and they made it a major highlight of the trip.