‘Act of Killing’ Editor Niels Pagh Andersen on Creating ‘Order in Chaos’ in the Editing Room

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Over the course of a celebrated 40-year career, veteran Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen has worked on critically acclaimed films including Pirjo Honkasalo’s “The 3 Rooms of Melancholia” and Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence.”One of the key takeaways from those collaborations, which he explores in his new book “Order in Chaos: Storytelling and Editing in Documentary Film,” is the importance of the creative synergy that forms between an editor and a filmmaker.“The artistic vision is the director’s responsibility.

But with the [editing] process, there I feel it’s also my responsibility that we get the best out of the two of us,” says Andersen, who gave a masterclass this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. “If you can have the creative dialogue, then you create something that is bigger than the individual.” In “Order in Chaos,” Andersen offers readers a look into the principles and methods behind his creative process through case studies of eight films that he edited, including Oppenheimer’s two Academy Award-nominated features, Jennifer Fox’s “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman,” and Ai Weiwei’s migration doc “Human Flow.”The e-book version includes exclusive clips from each of the movies, as well as conversations with the directors, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind some of the most significant documentary films of recent memory.Andersen got his start in the 1970s under the tutelage of Christian Hartkopp, one of the leading Danish editors at the time.

His breakthrough came with an offer to work on “Pathfinder,” from Norwegian director Nils Gaup, the first feature-length film to be shot in the indigenous.