AN OPEN LETTER TO FILM FESTIVALS

While the role of the editor is a key element in film production production, the best editing is often relatively invisible. Designed to keep the audience in the story, the craft is often referred to as the “Invisible Art.”

The Editor creates the first cut as the film is being shot, which requires skills in storytelling, performance and shot selection, structure, rhythm, pace, length, taste and talent. This first viewing of the film most important, as film editors have the special skills and intuition to craft story, emotion, subtext and rhythm which is unique art of cinema and developed silently over hundred of years. All other crafts such as direction, script, acting, costume, mack-up, light and cinematography has been inherited from other other art forms such as stage, painting, novels. But editing is only craft that developed with the cinema and inseparable from the history of cinema.

 A skillful editor interprets the story bits with his or her own sensibility. Apart from reshaping screenplay, choosing performance, crafting tricks to make a scene work, editing is an unique art of creating imagery in cinema. Which can't be scripted or pre visualizer, imagery in cinema is only born in editor's timeline and unique property of cinema. Editing is also a bard culture, a performance based art form like music. You can not analyses performance with how deeply or softly a player presses a key, it is the overall impression of the performance. Like a skillful bard, he or she knows how to hold a story bit much longer to satisfy his audience, which story bit will evoke humor and which will boar his audience. Timing a shot, pacing story bits, juxtaposition are personal interpretation of story bits and works in micro level, but they shape the whole emotional spectrum of the story. With the advancement in technology, editors not only make decisions about editing to shape the narrative but also frequently re-frame or stitch the shots together, enhance or alter the performances for the sake of storytelling. This is how an editor makes a story lively with lots of emotional story bits developed during the editing. 
As the festivals' submissions for the major film festivals are about to begins within a few months, I am requesting filmmakers, editors and film critics around the glob to sign the petition. We are asking the festivals to honour the work of the artists who devotes the highest time in a film than any other film crew member. Those who are in this profession of film making, they must agree with me that including the "Editing" in the Award Category will honour the job of the Invisible artists as well as aid in inspiring others to dive deep inside the film language. It is also encouraging for the future generations who want to persuade this profession. 

Please kindly request International Film Festivals to add Editing Category for Fiction and Non fiction storytelling.

Thanking You

Team EDITRY and labourer of cinema around the world.