Edited By is a website that features 206 editors who invented, developed, fine-tuned and revolutionized the art of film editing. It begins with Hettie Gray Baker, whose working years spanned 1913-1938, and ends with Joi McMillon, ACE, who co-edited Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018).
I’ve known that women editors have played a significant role in the evolution of cinema, without knowing many details or having seen many photos like this one.
But in January 2018, I came across a chapter about editing in a film history book in which every reference to a film mentioned the director’s name, not the editor’s. I looked up each film on IMDb and discovered an astonishing number of women editors, and set about doing the research which has resulted in the website. It isn’t meant be comprehensive or exhaustive, but rather to be the beginning of a survey that others will continue to expand upon.
The first part of the website presents the “main editors”—women who were, or are, editors by profession. There are ninety-two women represented with full pages, as well as eighteen more who have smaller mentions (for example, in relation to their work on films directed by Jean Rouch.)
The second part of the website presents the ninety-six “Filmmakers Who (always or sometimes) Edit” which includes many experimental and documentary filmmakers.
There are also other elements, like a photo gallery with posters from many of the films they edited, and four appendices with links to a lot of additional information about each of the editors.
And there are two versions of the film Edited By: The Companion Film, which can be streamed for free and downloaded from the site (see links below.) Both films present a one-minute clip from a film edited by each of the “main editors.” The first version is 76 minutes. The second version is 113 minutes; it’s longer because it includes all the editors who were added after the website was launched.