Q & A with Walter Murch

Recorded live at the February 2025 lacpug Meet.
We had the privilege to screen the documentary, HER NAME WAS MOVIOLA. Written by Walter Murch and directed by Howard Berry it tells the story of film editing, the way it used to be.
After the screening Walter joined us from his home in Bolinas via ZOOM and was gracious enough to answer questions from the audience. And that is what you see here.

-About Walter Murch
Murch's six decades in cinema as film editor, sound mixer, writer and director stretches back to 1969 and Francis Coppola’s THE RAIN PEOPLE. It includes work on THX-1138, THE GODFATHER I, II, and III, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, The CONVERSATION, APOCALYPSE NOW, The ENGLISH PA-TIENT, TOUCH OF EVIL, The TALENTED MR.RIPLEY, COLD MOUNTAIN, and many other films with directors such as George Lucas, Fred Zinnemann, Philip Kaufman, Anthony Minghella, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Mendes and Brad Bird.

Murch's pioneering achievements in sound were acknowledged by Coppola when he granted the screen credit of Sound Designer to Murch for Apocalypse Now. Over a thirty-year period, Murch has been nominated for nine Academy Awards (six for editing picture and three for sound mixing) and has won three Oscars: for best sound on Apocalypse Now and for Best Film Editing and Best Sound for his work on The English Patient. He has also received nine BAFTA nominations resulting in three BAFTA wins: for best film editing and best sound on The Conversation; and best film edit-ing on The English Patient.

Murch has also recently edited and co-written two feature-length documentaries: PARTICLE FEVER (2013), directed by Mark Levinson, on the search for the Higgs Boson (winner of the Grierson Award, and the Steven Hawking Medal for Science Communication); and COUP 53 (2020), directed by Taghi Amirani, on the history and consequences of British and American interference in the politics of Iran. Coup 53 had its world premiere at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival, and won Best Documentary at the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran in 2021.

Coup 53 was released in 2020 as video on demand, in conjunction with 118 theaters in the UK, USA, Canada, and Ireland. It is available for streaming through coup53.com and vimeo.com . It currently has a 100% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, from 45 main-stream reviews, a distinction it shares with only 110 other films in the history of cinema.

Just completed and premiered at Sheffield DocFest 2024 is HER NAME WAS MOVIOLA (2024), an hour-long documentary on the process of edit-ing film on the traditional upright Moviola editing machine. Written by Murch, and featuring him, assistant Dan Farrell, and director Mike Leigh, the film was produced, directed, and edited by Howard Berry, head of post-production at the University of Hertfordshire. The film subsequently had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival 2024. Her Name Was Moviola has been nominated for Best Documentary at the American Cinema Editors Eddies ceremony.

Murch was also supervising editor on the nine-episode series NATURAL HISTORY OF THE STUDIO (2024) created by artist William Kentridge. It premiered at this year’s Venice Biennale and started streaming on MUBI in October 2024.

On March 3, 2024, Murch was granted the Career Achievement Award by the American Cinema Editors (ACE). Murch’s new book on film, Suddenly Something Clicked, will be published in the USA by Faber&Faber on 15 July 2025.Hosted by Michael Horton

Walter Murch - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004555/?...
Her Name Was Moviola: https://moviolathemovie.com/
Camera: Mattias Marasigan https://mattiasalegro.webflow.io/
Camera: Sven Pape: https://svenpape.com/
Editor: Philip Hodgetts https://www.intelligentassistance.com/
Titles by captionAnimator: https://www.intelligentassistance.com...

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