Documentaries That Inspire

Karen Everett, owner of New Doc Editing. (Photo by Phyllis Christopher, www.phyllischristopher.com)

Tired of watching depressing social-issue documentaries? During my first trip to the Gaia Film Festival, I saw two fabulously inspiring films, Fields of Fuel and Crazy Sexy Cancer. These films, along with the Sundance Institute’s funding call for documentaries about social entrepreneurs, rekindled my love for documentary films that inspire the human soul.  It also shaped our mission at New Doc Editing, which is to help directors craft engaging, stirring stories that focus on solutions, rather than obsess about problems.

My encounter with just such a film nearly two decades ago launched my career in documentary filmmaking.  I was a somewhat jaded student at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.  One of my teachers, an emerging young filmmaker named Marlon Riggs, had just premiered his film Tongues Untied.  This ground-breaking personal documentary about the challenges of being black and gay in America avoided self pity by focusing on the solution rather than the stigma of feeling outcast.  As Marlon states at the film’s end, “Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act.”  I remember feeling awed, moved to my core, as I watched Tongues Untied. I was riveted by Marlon’s courageous act of self-disclosure and his call to build community. That vision sustained the next eighteen years of my filmmaking career.  I directed several award-winning documentaries that played at more than 150 film festivals worldwide.  Among them was a PBS biography of my beloved and inspiring mentor, Marlon Riggs.

Love for Editing

New Doc Editing grew out of my love for editing and fascination with story structure. To help craft my film Women in Love, I took a fantastic screenwriting seminar by Hollywood guru Robert McKee.  I was amazed to learn how precisely screenwriters map out story structure.  I then devoured screenwriting books that helped me edit the complex, true tale of seven protagonists navigating their love lives.  After Women in Love’s successful launch, I continued to find new ways of adapting screenwriting techniques to documentaries.  I wrote articles and began teaching this new body of work at the San Francisco Film Arts Foundation and in the documentary program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.  My students ate it up.  Not only was I able to delineate the problems of harnessing a powerful fictional structure to the randomness of real life, I was able to provide creative solutions.

Prestigious Film Festivals

After years of seeing myself as an artist at the cutting-edge of society, I had carved out a progressive identity that included a hefty bias against commercial enterprise. Deciding to turn my storytelling expertise into an editing and story consulting business required a hefty paradigm shift!  Through the help of a business coach, I came to realize that most successful business people aren’t greedy.  They are, in fact, generous and committed to solving other people’s problems.

My desire to help documentary filmmakers transform meandering films into inspiring, compelling stories fuels my venture at New Doc Editing.  Every day I take a few minutes to nurture that enthusiasm.  I visualize sitting next to the talented documentary directors with whom I work as we attend prestigious film festivals around the world. We feel grateful as audiences and critics applaud our films for their inspiring messages, compelling people to change their lives for the better.

Documentary editor and storytelling specialist Karen Everett brings two decades of cutting experience and a deep understanding of narrative structure to the editing room.  She has edited several award-winning documentaries for television, theatrical screenings and educational distribution.

During the past eighteen years, Karen has also taught editing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, named the top U.S. documentary program by Documentary Magazine.  She has consulted on hundreds of documentaries and moderated filmmaking seminars.  A published author, Karen wrote “Reality in Three Acts: What Documentary Filmmakers Can Learn From Screenwriters” and the book Documentary Editing.  She teaches a popular two-day seminar on documentary storytelling at the San Francisco Film Society which is available online.

Karen has directed and produced five documentaries, including the award-winning PBS biography I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs.  She received a Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley in 1992 and her B.A. degree from Smith College in 1987.