IMAGINARY STUDIO WORKS

Narrative Short

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Credit: Writer, Director, Producer

When a new parent's postpartum depression devolves into bizarre hallucinations, an escape from motherhood becomes necessary.

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Watch now on HBO

Credit: Editor

From director Erin Lee Carr, this Story Syndicate and Carr Lot production brought me my first foray into true crime. It’s the story of the Bling Ring retold by the one member of the teenage burglary ring that has never before spoken out – and that everyone else pointed the finger at.

Crafting Rachel Lee’s story required me to think critically and emotionally about dishonesty, adolescent friendship, the darker impacts of popular and internet culture, and addiction.

In collaboration with dynamic director Carr, the result is a Trojan horse of a film that draws you in with the audacity of this crime spree, but delivers a lot of self-reflection –for both subject and audience.

Documentary Short

*World Premiere: Sundance Film Festival 2023

Credit: Co-Writer & Supervising Editor

In my latest collaboration with director Paula Eiselt, we shine a light on an innovative and urgent legal strategy to challenge abortion bans in the wake of the June 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Under G-d weaves together the stories of a Jewish mother and activist in Indiana, a rabbi in Florida and lawyers throughout the country who are seeking to fight abortion bans in part by placing them in the legal and cultural context of religious freedom. In an ironic twist, the very laws that might support this work are the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), which have thus far been used to allow faith believers to make an end-run around civil rights protections, as in the notorious Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. or gay wedding cake cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. Under G-d introduces us to characters that are now flipping the very script used so effectively by Christian nationalists. In taking on these public protests and cases, Jewish leaders around the country are asking the United States to protect women, and protect democracy, by preserving the constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state.

It was deeply gratifying to join forces again with Paula, as well as editor Inés Vogelfang and producer Darcy McKinnon, to tell a hopeful story about an effective strategy to protect reproductive rights. We pored through the interviews and crafted the edit in a record three months just in time for a world premiere at Sundance!

Feature Documentary

*Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Impact for Change at the Sundance Film Festival

Watch now on Hulu

Credit: Editor

I had the honor of joining forces with Flávia de Souza in the edit on this powerful feature from directors Paula Eiselt & Tonya Lewis Lee.

Aftershock follows two bereaved fathers whose partners suffered preventable deaths due to childbirth related complications. Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre go on to galvanize activists, birth-workers and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises of our time – the U.S. maternal health crisis.

This film called for a delicate balance of intimate, character-driven vérité and extended contextual background about the practice of obstetrics in the United States. The challenge for Flávia and I was to present all that while keeping the story moving forward, the emotion close to the surface, and the information relevant and incisive.

Feature Documentary

*Winner of the Shine Award at the 2022 BlackStar Film Festival

Coming soon to Independent Lens

Credits: Editor & Co-Writer

Hazel Gurland-Pooler’s directorial debut is an archival delight that uplifts the history of the low-income Black mothers at the helm of the Welfare Rights Movement. The film centers on the story of Ruby Duncan, a Las Vegas hotel worker who was injured on the job in the late 1960s, rendering her unable to work or support her seven children. Ruby led a group of poor women to take on local, state, and even national politicians, exploding the myth of the “Welfare queen” and proving that the people best positioned to determine anti-poverty policy are the people who are most affected: poor people!

Working with Hazel on this project over the course of several years, I learned an enormous amount from Ruby and her friends, Mary Wesley and Alversa Beals. These women were creative, hilarious, and unstoppable in their fight for a better future for their children. The history of the Welfare Rights Movement has long been forgotten, but with economic inequality out of control and renewed calls for a universal basic income, it is now more relevant than ever.

Feature Documentary
Credit: Editor

Diane Tsai’s directorial debut, Be Our Guest, gave me the opportunity to tell the story of one extraordinary family’s response to the opioid addiction epidemic.

“Are you willing to give up a year of your life so that someone can have the rest of their life?” Lydia O’Leary asks her four school-aged children every year. And every year they choose to open up their home to strangers in recovery from opioid addiction. As the O’Leary family and their long-term guests live communally, sharing meals and even bedrooms with the kids, they struggle with the complex balance between their family mission of radical kindness and the conflicts faced by the children as they come of age.

Jenn Mosher, one of the O’Leary’s guests, exemplifies how extraordinarily generous the participants in this film were with us. Her struggle to recover while caring for her infant daughter (also in recovery having been born methadone dependent), as well as regain custody of her older child, is one of the most emotional and redeeming stories I have ever had the honor to tell. I hope audiences will be as grateful as I am to Jenn and the entire O’Leary family to have their story in the world.

Feature Documentary

Credit: Editor

From director Deirdre Fishel and Fork Films, Women in Blue explores gender, race, violence, and policing through the eyes of women police on the Minneapolis Police Department. This film offered me a humbling editorial challenge of representing the women on the department as they struggle to alternately reform and also fit in to police culture, in addition to representing the views of the affected community, often voiced by the indomitable Black Lives Matter activist and mayoral candidate, Nekima Levy-Pounds. I hope the story it tells of policing in Minneapolis, with its emphasis on the potential of gender balance to shift the culture of policing, will offer a new and nuanced perspective on an urgent crisis when the film meets audiences later this year.

Feature Documentary

Credit: Editor

Watch now on HBO Max, Amazon Prime or iTunes

My most rewarding challenge yet has been editing this singular feature documentary from director Paula Eiselt. 93QUEEN follows a tenacious group of women who are shattering glass ceilings in their Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood by forming the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in NYC. The film premiered to rave reviews from The Hollywood Reporter and others at Hot Docs 2018. The theatrical release was held over for six weeks and met with more raves from the LA Times, NYTimes, and others. Broadcast nationally on POV and internationally on Arte.

Fiction Podcast

Credit: Story Consultant

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.

A New York Times “Best New Podcast of 2020,” Appearances was created by Sharon Mashihi, a very dear and brilliant friend of mine, and produced by Mermaid Palace. When Sharon invited me to join her on Appearances I had little experience with audio, and this show revealed to me just how rich and freeing a medium it is.

Appearances is an audio mind trip about an Iranian American woman, the family she carries around in her head, and the family she wants to have. It's hilarious. It's heart-rending. It's a gift.

I had the incredible honor of story consulting on the series, and Sharon's profound artistry kept me amazed the whole ride through. APPEARANCES defies received narratives about immigrant family dynamics, single women who wish to have children, and parent-child bonds in general. Throughout, Sharon and a pitch-perfect supporting cast deliver performances that will make you laugh, cry, and forget whatever you thought you were going to get done while listening to this podcast.

Feature documentary

Credit: Supervising Editor

Available on all major VOD platforms and soon on Starz

This feature debut from director Angela Washko gave me the opportunity to step into a supervising role on the edit. Over the course of two years, Washko followed the one-and-only Mrs. Kasha Davis (RuPaul's Drag Race Season 7), often joined by her sisters in the local Rochester drag community. This film is funny, pulls at the heartstrings, and confronts some serious questions about drag's move from local communities to mainstream national television.

I advised Washko on the edit over the course of two years, as well as editor Jota Sosnowski – an emerging editor whose talent is on full display in Workhorse Queen.

TV Documentary

Credit: Editor

*Nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award; Winner of a Golden Telly*

Watch now at PBS

Exploring a point of view I was not previously intimately familiar with, this PBS documentary gave me the opportunity to listen to and craft together some very forthright and emotional firsthand stories from veterans of various wars. As one of our subjects notes, “If the public understood war the way warriors understand war, we would be much more frugal in sending women and men to fight and die.” Featuring award-winning author and veteran Karl Marlantes and renowned war correspondent and Academy Award nominated director Sebastian Junger. Produced by Michael Epstein.

TV Docu-series

Credit: Editor

*Nominated for a News & Doc Emmy Award*

Watch at PBS

I had the pleasure of working with Ark Media in association with McGee Media, editing the final episode of this documentary mini-series. An expansive look at Black Americans’ achievements, struggles, culture, and politics over the past fifty years. Directors: Talleah Bridges McMahon, Asako Gladsjo, & Sabin Streeter.

Feature Documentary

Credit: Editor

Watch at PBS

Editing this film directed by John Maggio really illuminated for me how we got to the current tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. We start at the very beginning, when the U.S. and the Soviets carved up Korea at the end of WWII without the slightest input from Koreans.

The film takes a very human approach to the history by centering testimonies from survivors of the conflict, including a victim of an American war crime, a woman separated from her immediate family by the DMZ for the past 70 years, and a high-ranking North Korean defector.

Feature Documentary

Credits: Additional Editor & Additional Camera Person

Watch now on Google Play or Kanopy

This award-winning feature documentary screened in festivals internationally and was broadcast on POV and LOGO. The film chronicles four women’s struggle with a criminal justice system that displayed clear bias based on their race, gender expression, and sexual orientation. Directed by blair doroshwalther.

Web Series Episode

Credit: Editor

Watch now at Vice

In this episode of Broadly Meets which I edited for Vice, Wendy Davis explains that, even in the wake of a major Supreme Court victory against the restrictive Texas law she filibustered in 2013, tons of people still can’t access their constitutionally protected reproductive rights in the U.S… and the situation could easily get worse. Directed by Jamie Sanchez.

Web Series Episode

Credit: Editor

Watch now at Vice

I edited a profile of artist Duke Riley’s piece ‘Fly By Night’ for The Creators Project. Featuring Duke and his flock of 2,000 homing pigeons, lighting up the night sky over the East River. Directed by Sebastian Ischer.

Feature Documentary

Credit: Additional Editor

A feature film from the creators of Makers: Women Who Make America, this documentary premiered at DOC NYC in 2015. A conference may not seem like a dramatic topic for a film, but when that conference is the most enormous –and most hotly disputed– gathering of women from all over the globe, it is nothing short of revolutionary. Directors Dyllan McGee & Michael Epstein.