My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.

This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

It's rare in a documentary film that you have a repetitive act. So when you do, you can shoot it in different ways so that you have more choices when you're sitting down to edit that sequence six months later.

Making movies is an effort is an attempt to leave a trace of your existence.

I'm very careful of not being critical of other people's movies, which work in different styles. I think some of my movies can be interpreted as critical of their subjects.

There's the internal rhythm within a sequence, and then there's the rhythm between the sequences, and that's extremely important in constructing the narrative. For example, you don't put two big dramatic scenes right next to each other. But you can use the rhythm of the transition shots; they can often serve a double purpose.