Secret Codes: Do You Speak Editing?

Secret Codes: Do You Speak Editing?
- Date
- Feb 20th 2024
- With
- Gyula Gazdag, Susan Korda
Even for established filmmakers, editing is often the secret language of cinema, the hardest to put into words. But bring together the masterminds of our Talents mentors, and you get a behind-the-scenes look at the profession that is sure to be eye-opening for everyone. In an interactive exchange with the audience, long-time Editing Studio expert Susan Korda joins with Script Station luminary Gyula Gazdag to demystify the processes of writing and rewriting a film's structure and story during the process of montage. Drawing on their experiences as directors and editors and with practical examples on the big screen, Korda and Gazdag talk straight about the politics of the editing room and how to "kill your darlings" - the ability to sacrifice your preconceived notions for the sake of the project and let your film learn to speak its own language.

Gyula Gazdag
Gyula Gazdag is a screenwriter and director of film, theater, and television and a Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Theater, Film, and TV. He was born and raised in Hungary, where most of his films have been banned for different periods during Communism and have been denied foreign exhibition, some of them have been banned again in 2012. In 1993 he moved to Los Angeles to assume his responsibilities as area head of the newly created Film and TV Production Program at UCLA. He has served as the Artistic Director of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab since 1997 and has worked with young screenwriters at the Script Station of Berlinale Talents since 2006. His films, such as “Bástyasétány Hetvennégy” (Singing on the Treadmill) and “Hol volt, hol nem volt” (A Hungarian Fairy Tale), have been screened at numerous festivals.

Susan Korda
Susan Korda edited the Academy Award-nominated “For all Mankind” and the Teddy Award-winning “Trembling before G-d". In 2021, she received an Ariel Award for the award-sweeping feature "Sin señas particulares". Susan was story consultant on “First Cousin Once Removed”, which won at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2012 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2014. Her directing credits include “Vienna is Different", “One of Us” and the short “Salomea’s Nose".