Roland Schlimme

Last updated

Roland Schlimme is a Canadian film editor known in particular for his work with filmmakers Peter Mettler and Jennifer Baichwal. He's also worked on several projects with artists Phillip Barker and Laura Taler as well as filmmakers Alison Murray and Cliff Caines.

Contents

He began his film editing career working with Peter Mettler in an abandoned hotel outside Zurich on the feature documentary Gambling, Gods and LSD , tackling hundreds of hours of film and video to produce a fifty-two-hour assembly edit and a three-hour film. [1] Of this period, Mettler would later remark, “I’ve never lived together with anybody as intensively as Roland. … He edited the day shift and I’d edit the night shift and we’d converse and show each other things in-between.” [2]

Speaking of his contributions to Anthropocene: The Human Epoch , director Jennifer Baichwal said, “The quarry scene was interesting because it was Roland’s idea, our editor, to use the opera [Mozart’s Don Giovanni]. At first, I thought, ‘it’s drawing too much attention to itself,’ but then I grew to love it because there is something so epic about that environment.” [3] (The segment sets activity at the cavernous Carrara marble quarries in Italy to the second act of the opera, in which a statue takes its revenge on an unrepentant Don Giovanni.)

He works predominantly but not exclusively on documentary films and describes his approach to film editing with analogies to writing and music composition, stressing the importance of early-stage assemblies. In an interview published in 2012, he elaborated, “Assembly is a crucial stage because it's an exploration of the material, a time to experiment a bit, but importantly a way of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the material, what it might offer the film. The discussion about structure is based on the assemblies. … I work on a lot of unscripted material. This is the model of filmmaking wherein the activity in the editing room becomes something like the writing process, except that it's a process of juggling images, sounds, motions, words, music, etc. … it's important with these types of films to have the time to make it work.” [4]

His film credits also include writing and music composition (Trouble in the Peace, Watermark , Manufactured Landscapes , and others). In addition to music for films, Schlimme produces music as Rewaver (along with Joseph Doane).

Schlimme mentors and lectures occasionally (including masterclasses at the Documentary Media MFA program at Toronto Metropolitan University) and in 2012 he inaugurated the “Creative Editing and Sound” undergraduate course at Toronto Metropolitan University. [5]

Accolades

The films Schlimme has edited have been featured at TIFF nine times (including a Gala, a Special Presentation, and the Master's Programme) and at Hot Docs eight times (including an Opening Night Gala). Among many international accolades, they’ve won two Canadian Screen Awards for Best Feature Documentary ( Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2019; Watermark in 2014), two Genies for Best Documentary ( Manufactured Landscapes in 2006; Gambling, Gods and LSD in 2002), a Genie for Best Arts Documentary ( National Parks Project in 2011), and an International Emmy for Outstanding Documentary ( Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles in 1999).

Schlimme was the winner (along with editor Caroline Christie) of the Directors Guild of Canada's DGC Craft Award for Picture Editing in a Documentary in 2020 for Meat the Future . [6] He was a Canadian Screen Award nominee (Best Editing in a Documentary) for Long Time Running in 2018 [7] and a Gemini Award nominee (Best Picture Editing in a Documentary Program or Series) for Acquainted with the Night in 2011. [8] He is also a two-time nominee for the Canadian Cinema Editors awards for Acquainted with the Night in 2011 and for The Ghosts in Our Machine in 2014 (both times along with editor Roderick Deogrades). [9]

Filmography

Documentary

Feature films

Short films

  • The Wet Season - 2002
  • Forsaken - 2005
  • Unpublished - 2005
  • On Fire - 2006
  • The Art of Seduction - 2006
  • The Sorcerer - 2007
  • Night Vision - 2008
  • Solace - 2008
  • Love Song - 2008
  • The Patient - 2009
  • Slow Blink - 2010
  • National Parks Project (Mingin) - 2011
  • Hardcore - 2011
  • Malody - 2012
  • Shadow Nettes - 2017
  • Torn Again - 2021
  • The Distance Between Us - 2021

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingrid Veninger</span> Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter

Ingrid Veninger is a Canadian actress, writer, director, producer, and film professor at York University. Veninger began her career in show business as a child actor in commercials and on television; as a teen, she was featured in the CBC series Airwaves (1986–1987) and the CBS series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987–1990). In the 1990s, she branched out into producing, and, in 2003, she founded her own production company, pUNK Films, through which she began to work on her own projects as a writer and director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Burtynsky</span> Canadian photographer and artist

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime, a trait established by the grand scale of the work he creates, though they are equally disturbing in the way they reveal the context of rapid industrialization.

<i>Eye to Ear II</i> 2004 studio album by Fred Frith

Eye to Ear II is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is a collection of film music composed and performed by Frith, and is the second of three Eye to Ear albums dedicated to his work for short films. It was recorded in Germany and the United States between 1997 and 2003.

The Canadian Screen Award for Best Achievement in Editing is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian film editor in a feature film. The award was presented for the first time in 1966 as part of the Canadian Film Awards, and was transitioned to the new Genie Awards in 1980. Since 2012 it has been presented as part of the Canadian Screen Awards.

<i>Manufactured Landscapes</i> 2006 Canadian film

Manufactured Landscapes is a 2006 Canadian documentary film about the industrial landscape photography of Edward Burtynsky. It was directed by Jennifer Baichwal and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It was the first of three documentary collaborations between Baichwall and Burtynsky, followed by Watermark in 2013 and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Mettler</span> Canadian film director and cinematographer

Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer. He is best known for his unique, intuitive approach to documentary, evinced by such films as Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), and The End of Time (2012). "His peripatetic lens is ever gravitating toward outsiders in search of ecstatic states", writes José Teodoro in Brick, "strange spectacles that defy straightforward documentation, and sacred places that promise some metaphysical deliverance. There are precedents for his methodologies—the films of Chris Marker and Werner Herzog come to mind—but Mettler’s gifts as an open and unobtrusive interviewer and his capacity to discover shared sensibilities between people of vastly diverse cultures and creeds feels singular."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Baichwal</span> Canadian documentary filmmaker

Jennifer Baichwal is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, writer and producer.

<i>Gambling, Gods and LSD</i> 2002 documentary film by Peter Mettler

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a 2002 Canadian/Swiss experimental documentary film by Canadian film director Peter Mettler. It was shot between 1997 and 1999 in Canada, the United States, Switzerland and India, and is a "fragmented narrative" that shows what people do to discover themselves and find happiness.

Watermark is a 2013 Canadian documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky. It concerns the history and use of water. Burtynsky was previously the subject of Baichwal's 2006 documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. The film looks at water use practices in ten countries around the world, including the United States, China and India.

Luc Bourdon is a Canadian documentary filmmaker and video artist from Quebec known for his 2008 film The Memories of Angels. His other films have included La Grande Bibliothèque (2005), Classes de Maîtres (2009) and Une vie pour deux (2013).

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Award for Best Short Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented to a film judged to be the year's best short documentary film. Prior to 2012 the award was presented as part of the Genie Awards program; since 2012 it has been presented as part of the expanded Canadian Screen Awards.

<i>Long Time Running</i> 2017 Canadian documentary

Long Time Running is a 2017 Canadian documentary film, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. The film profiles the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip during their Man Machine Poem Tour of 2016, which followed the band's announcement of lead singer Gord Downie's cancer diagnosis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas de Pencier</span> Canadian cinematographer and filmmaker

Nicholas de Pencier is a Canadian cinematographer and filmmaker. The spouse and professional partner of filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal in Mercury Films, he is the cinematographer and producer on most of her films as well as codirector of the films Long Time Running. and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. He was also solo director of the 2016 documentary Black Code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2018 Toronto International Film Festival</span> 2018 film festival

The 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6 to 16, 2018. In June 2018, the TIFF organizers announced a program to ensure that at least 20 percent of all film critics and journalists given press accreditation to the festival were members of underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. The People's Choice Award was won by Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly.

<i>Anthropocene: The Human Epoch</i> 2018 Canadian film

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a 2018 Canadian documentary film made by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. It explores the emerging concept of a geological epoch called the Anthropocene, defined by the impact of humanity on natural development.

The Prix Iris for Best Editing is an annual film award presented by Québec Cinéma as part of the Prix Iris awards program, to honour the year's best film editing in the Cinema of Quebec.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rich Williamson (filmmaker)</span> Canadian film director, cinematographer and editor

Rich Williamson is a Canadian film director, cinematographer and editor, most noted as codirector with Shasha Nakhai of the 2021 film Scarborough. The film won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture, and Nakhai and Williamson won the award for Best Director, at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.

The Holier It Gets is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and released in 2000. The film is a personal document of Baichwal and her family on a pilgrimage to India, honouring their father Krishna's wishes to have his ashes scattered at the source of the Ganges following his death.

Acquainted with the Night: Excursions through the World after Dark is a Canadian television documentary film, which was broadcast by Documentary in September 2010. Adapted from the nonfiction book by Christopher Dewdney, the film explores various aspects of life at nighttime, both in human and wilderness environments. Events depicted in the film include religious ceremonies, nighttime cultural events such as Nuit Blanche, intimate moments such as parents reading stories to their children at bedtime, philosophical musings on the effects of nighttime light pollution, and visuals of nocturnal animals.

Mike MunnCCE is a Canadian film and television editor, who won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Editing in a Documentary at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards for his work on the film To Kill a Tiger. He was also a dual nominee in the same year for Batata.

References

  1. ↑ Lan, Stephen (1 September 2002). "In search of wonder: Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD". Take One: Film & Television in Canada . Archived from the original on 24 February 2016. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  2. ↑ Marc Glassman, "The POV Interview: Peter Mettler, Part Two". ‘’Point of View Magazine”, November 1, 2009.
  3. ↑ Justin Morris and Matthew I. Thompson, "Scale and Detail: An Interview with Jennifer Baichwal". The Neutral, Graduate Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Issue 2, 2021.
  4. ↑ "L’assemblage est une étape cruciale parce que c’est une exploration du matériel, un temps que l’on s’alloue pour faire quelques expérimentations, mais c’est surtout l’occasion d’évaluer les forces et les faiblesses du matériel, de voir ce qu’elles peuvent apporter au film. On a discuté ensuite de la structure à l’aide des assemblages. … Je travaille beaucoup avec un matériel non scénarisé. Cette façon de faire des films fait en sorte que l’activité dans la salle de montage se rapproche du processus d’écriture, excepté qu’il s’agit là de jongler avec des images, des sons, des mouvements, des mots, de la musique, etc. … Donc, il est essentiel avec ce genre de films de se donner le temps d’arriver à un résultat qui tienne le coup." Interview by Catherine Martin, “Roland Schlimme: Profession Monteur”. ‘’24 images”, Number 157, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Documentary Media MFA – Program Info Night". akimbo.ca. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  6. ↑ Lauren Malyk, "Michelle Latimer, Vincenzo Natali among DGC film winners". Playback , October 28, 2020.
  7. ↑ Pat Mullen, "Canadian Screen Awards Preview: Picks and Foolish Predictions". Cinemablographer, March 11, 2018.
  8. ↑ "26th Annual Gemini Awards". Tribute , September 7, 2011.
  9. ↑ Julianna Cummins, "Canadian Cinema Editors Awards announces nominees". Playback , April 9, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.