eDIT 11. Filmmaker's Festival: Where Everything Comes Together
Being back in my hometown, Cologne, Germany, and looking back at those three days at Frankfurt, capital of the German and European banking business, is like remembering a fantastic dream. While outside the financial world has been in uproar, the world of international filmmakers met inside the big Cinestar Metropolis Cinema in downtown Frankfurt to celebrate movies, postproduction, the arts of editing, cinematography, visual effects and animation.
For the 11th time, the eDIT Filmmaker´s Festival opened at the end of last month, celebrating the art and science of the moving image. Presented by the State of Hessen and the Hessian Office for Private Broadcasting and New Media (LPR Hessen) and sponsored by the City of Frankfurt am Main the organizers of the festival were able to present a stunning programm with fantastic lectures, panels and screenings.
New international partners teamed up with eDIT: the American Cinema Editors (ACE) and IMAGO, the European Federation of Cinematographers, joined the festival and contributed several events. And while the longtime collaboration with the Visual Effects Society came to an official end (the Society is now joining the fmx event at Stuttgart), the eDIT festival managed to get Tom Atkin, founder and longtime general manager of the VES., as a co-director for the festival at Frankfurt. So one can expect, that in the future eDIT will continue to present major visual effects movies. From 2009 on, there will be also an extra day devoted to the art of cinematography hosted by IMAGO. The goal of the eDIT was defined to create an awareness of the art of moviemaking both for the industry and the audience. As Sebastian Popp, the founder and co-director of eDIT explained, the industry has to face heavy changes regarding traditional jobs in moviemaking. Editing, for instance, will become more and more part of previs. And the director of photography has to collaborate heavily with the vfx department. The traditional division of responsibilities, therefore, is changing right now quite dramatically. And the industry has to deal with that. So the festival will expand their presentations in more and more fields of postproduction to keep track of these modifications. And this years eDIT gave an excellent foretaste of what you can expect.
After the opening gala and introductory remarks, ACE and IMAGO presented two special awards to two living giants of filmmaking: cinematographer Guissepe Rotunno and editor Anne Coates.
IMAGO created the IMAGO Tribute especially for the filmmaker´s festival. The first tribute was presented to Rotunno, AIC ASC. Nigel Walters, president of IMAGO, described Rotunno as the emperor of world´s cinematographers, to which all have to pay tribute.
The founding father of IMAGO, Luciano Tovoli AIC ASC, gave a charming Italo-English speech about his friendship with Rotunno before handing the heavy prize to the moved DP. The director of photography of such legendary films as Rocco and his Brothers (Luchino Visconti,1960), The Leopard (Visconti, 1963) and Amacord (Federico Fellini, 1973) worked with other directors such as Stanley Kramer, Bob Fosse, Sydney Pollack Terry Gilliam and John Huston.
The "eDIT 11. Filmaker's Festival Honors" was presented to "Lady" Coates, ACE and member of the Order of the British Empire. Last Year's honors recipient Tom Rolfe,co-editor of such films like Taxi Driver, The Horse Whisperer, Heaven´s Gate or Heat, gave a laudatory speech, in which he mentioned Wuthering Heights by William Wyler as the key experience of young Coates. A young and beautiful Laurence Olivier stole her heart, for whom she has a crush since. So instead of becoming a trainer for race-horses, Coates wanted to become a film director. Through a studio, which concentrated on religious films, she got her foot into the business, after that she got the chance to work as an assistant to Reginald Mills, the editor of the wonderful films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Through that, she became the once in a lifetime chance to work with the striking handsome David Lean. Her golden ticket was the editing of David Lean´s epic classic Lawrence of Arabia for which she received the Academy Award. For five decades Coates worked with the finest film directors of the world. For David Lynch she edited The Elephant Man (1980), for Sydney Lumet she worked on Murder on the Orient Express. She edited for John Sturges, Carol Reed, Adrian Lyne, Ronald Neame, Sir Richard Attenborough and many others. The audience of the eDIT Gala together with Coates were surprised by three video-greetings, organized by the ACE: director Steven Soderberg, for whom Coates edited Out of Sight and Erin Brockovich, stated that if anybody would have asked him about a greeting for the Queen of England or the President of the United States, he would be too busy. "For Anne. V. Coates, however, I am not too busy, because Anne Coates knows more about the art and the craft of film editing then probably anyone walking the earth. What I loved most about Anne was, that she brought no preconceptions to the editing room. Every film was a brand new experience. So she was open minded, she was passionate, she was intuitive, she was methodical. I remember countless evenings where I would leave and Anne would stay behind and working through the night just trying to make the film better. She is an inspiration!"
Clint Eastwood, who starred in In the Line of Fire, told the audience, that the experience working with Coates is still one of the fondest memories of his cinematic life: "I have been a fan of Anne since David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and all the other films she did with all the great directors. I ran into some Secret Service guys the other night, [and]they were raving about this special scene, where I am supposed to make out with Rene Russo and all the parts are falling off. That seemed to get a big charge out of them! And whatever they are happy with I am happy with!"
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