Join us for a screening and launch party for “Edited by,” a brand new website that incorporates text, photographs and film posters to document and celebrate one hundred and thirty-nine women editors who invented, developed,fine-tuned and revolutionized the art of film editing.

This project was born a year ago, after filmmaker Su Friedrich was reading a chapter on editing in a film textbook and was surprised to find that none of the editors were named—only the directors—despite the fact that it was the skill of the editor’s work that led the films to be included in the chapter. 
This led Friedrich to discover that many of them had been edited by women. Thus the project began, and now the website WomenFilmEditors.princeton.edu (will be launched online by 1/11 – check back in then!)  will be the largest online repository of information about whose skillful editing created which great film, from the dawn of cinema to the present day, and of films from all corners of the globe. 
You’ll finally know who edited The Wizard of Oz. You’ll learn that it wasn’t Godard who did his own editing, it was three women who in combination edited fifteen of his most admired films. You’ll find out which black woman editor shaped The 400 Blows. And notwithstanding the fame of Eisenstein’s theory of montage, it was a woman who cut October and Alexander Nevsky. While we’re on the subject, who edited twenty of Herzog’s films? Who edited all of Cecil B. DeMille’s? What woman edited most of the canonical films from Africa? Who co-edited the first three Star Wars? And why did most of us not know the answers to these questions until now?

This event will include a short screening and presentation to showcase the often overlooked editing by many of the women featured in this project. Come out to celebrate, and test your cinema knowledge with a quiz designed by Friedrich with a special prize for our winner. Many of the editors will be in attendance for casual drinks and discussion while we toast the launch and have a chance for everyone to tour the archive.

A big shout out to Sorat Tungkasiri from the Digital Learning Center at Princeton, who did all of the web construction and data entry, and to Princeton University for serving as the host for the website.

Su Friedrich has been editing her films since 1978. Years ago, when she was completely broke, she tried to find work as an editor—if she could cut her own films, surely she could do it for others. It only took two gigs for her to realize what it took…and never did it again. For this and so many other reasons, she deeply admires the editors on this website, and the thousands more who did, and do, have what it takes (patience, fortitude, a knack for storytelling, a great eye and a great sense of rhythm).

Lydia Cornett is a documentary filmmaker and video producer based in Brooklyn. Her independent work focuses on artistic performance and personal histories while her professional assignments span visual journalism and a wide array of literary content. Lydia was selected as the 2019 Valentine & Clark Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a 2018 CoLab Fellow at UnionDocs. She has assisted filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi (Meru); Brett Story (The Hottest August); and Ken Burns (East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story). A member of The Video Consortium, she has produced video content for The New Yorker, Atlas Obscura, Slate Magazine, The Washington Post, Penguin Random House, and Princeton University. Lydia studied History and Film/Video at Princeton University and is a classically trained violinist & composer.

Lili Dekker is a recent graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study, where she concentrated in Documentary Media Theory and Practice and minored in German. Awarded grants from NYU, she is currently finishing a documentary film about her grandparents and their experience with Alzheimer’s disease. Alongside her own documentary projects, Dekker has worked with Magnum Photos, the New Museum, Kunhardt Productions, HBO, and PBS’s POV. She is based in New York City.

Charlotte Maher Levy started producing short films when she was 10 years old, and has been pursuing TV production professionally since she graduated from Princeton University, where she studied film production and screenwriting. She is now a TV producer, currently working on Animal Planet’s The Zoo.

Jane Pritchard is a writer and teacher originally from Albany, NY. In 2015, she graduated from Princeton University where she studied English and Visual Arts, completing dual theses in fiction and filmmaking. After spending the past two years working for an education company in Brazil, she now lives in Harlem.