Appendix B: History 101
This appendix has items related primarily to the history of women as editors.
It’s divided it into four sections: Online articles, Online videos, Books, and Miscellaneous.
We also found some interesting articles about women in film (not exclusively devoted to editors), so within each section we’ve separated the ones “About women editors” from those “About filmmakers”.
Finally, we organized it to be alphabetical based on the title of the item.
Please let us know through the contact page if you come across anything that we might add to this appendix.
ONLINE ARTICLES
About editors’ organizations
There are two organizations in the USA that are dedicated to editors (there are others, of course, like workshop places, but these are the two main ones, and of course there are others in many other countries.)
The Motion Picture Editors Guild, which also publishes Cinemontage, a (free to read) magazine each month that has lots of great articles.
American Cinema Editors (ACE), which runs the EDDIE Awards.You can find information about all the ACE members on their website.
And just a note in relation to women editors: There have been presidents of ACE since its founding in 1950. As far as I’ve been told, there has only been one woman who held that position. Tina Hirsch was president of ACE from 2000-2004.
About women editors
5 Editors that Broke the Hollywood Studio System by Michael Maher at PremiumBeat.com
A look at the editors who turned the generation of young directors in the 1960s and 1970s into household names. Features Coates, Schoonmaker, Allen, Fields, and Lucas.
5 Women Editors In Indian Cinema We Should Know About by Shruti Jani at FeminismInIndia.com
A look at some of the top editors in Indian cinema, featuring Renu Saluja, Beena Paul, Deepa Bhatia, Namrato Rao, and Aarti Bajaj.
25 Golden-Age Movies Edited By Women by Samantha Ludwig at Vulture.com
A discussion of women’s editing in key films from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
“A Tedious Job” – Women and Film Editing by Sara Galvão at Critics-Associated.com
A brief history of Hollywood’s most prominent and celebrated women editors
Barbara McLean: Editing, Authorship, and the Equal Right to Be the Best by J. E. Smyth in Cineaste
A biography of “Hollywood’s editor-in-chief” and the impact she and other women had on the films they edited.
Countering the Celluloid Ceiling: The Perils of Post-Production by Debra Kaufman at CineMontage.com
A discussion with women editors about gender bias in the edit suite and possible ways to address the problem
Cutting Comments: A Women Editors Roundtable by Lisa Leeman at Documentary.org
International Documentary assembled a group of top editors to discuss the art, craft and process of their work
Cutting Women: Margaret Booth and Hollywood’s Pioneering Female Film Editors by Kristen Hatch at the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia.edu
A look at Margaret Booth and other female editors who shaped early Hollywood
Did You Know? These Women Edited All The Timeless Classics We Love by Prateek Sharma at WMFIndia.com
A look at some prolific women editors and the hit films they edited.
Editorial: Recognising Women’s Work as Creative Work by Karen Pearlman & Adelheid Heftberger at ApparatusJournal.net
A scholarly investigation of the creative influence of women editors on early 20th century filmmaking
Ellas dan el corte by Elodi Mellado at FilmIn.es
(in Spanish) History of prominent film editors including Rose Smith, Margaret Booth, Anne Bauchens, Barbara McLean, Dorothy Spencer, Dede Allen, Anne V. Coates, Pepita Orduna, Anne Goursaud, Agnès Guillemot, Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte, Thelma Schoonmaker, Sally Menke, Mary Sweeney, Susan E. Morse, Alisa Lepselter, Dody Dorn, Sarah Flack, Elena Ruiz, and Irene Blecula.
Female Idol Blog Series – Editor Jabeen Merchant On Films, Feminism, Auteurship & More at WMFIndia.com
Interview with editor Jabeen Merchant.
Female Editors: The Understated Champions for Women in Film by Danielle Lee at Raindance.org
A list highlighting fifteen female editors and their accomplishments.
Film Editing as Women’s Work: Ėsfir’ Shub, Elizaveta Svilova, and the Culture of Soviet Montage by Lilya Kaganovsky at ApparatusJournal.net
An essay discussing the women behind Soviet montage films.
Hollywood Heights: May Brotherton, Queen of Film Editing by Mary Mallory, in The LA Daily Mirror, September 29, 2024
A detailed account of the experiences of Brotherton as an editor (and cinematographer) in the early days of cinema.
The Trouble Department: May Brotherton and the Agency of Women Cutters in the Early Film Industry by Rachael Camp.
An in-depth, book-length dissertation from 2023.
Opportunities for Women in Motion Pictures by Constance Talmadge in the Anaconda Standard, Sunday, July 30, 1922
1922 newspaper article about the career or editor Irene Morra.
Opportunities for Women in Motion Pictures by Constance Talmadge in the Anaconda Standard, Sunday, July 30, 1922—full page
SHEARS FOR THE LADIES: How the Omnipotent Cutters (Who Tend To Be Feminine) Do Their Work by D.W.C. at NYTimes.com
New York Times online article from 1936 about women film editors.
SHEARS FOR THE LADIES: How the Omnipotent Cutters (Who Tend To Be Feminine) Do Their Work – This is the PDF of the above
The 4 Unsung Pioneers of Film Editing by Michael Maher at Premium Beat.com
A look at the four women who predated the term “film editor” and whose names dominated the Academy Awards for decades. Features Booth, Bauchens, McLean, and Spencer.
The Moviola Mavens: Three Pioneering Women Editors by Kevin Lewis at Cinemontage.org
Biographies of Margaret Booth, Barbara McLean, and Anne Bauchens.
The ‘Invisible Art’: A Woman’s Touch Behind the Scenes–Kim Roberts, Kate Amend and Other Female Film Editors by John Anderson at NYTimes.com
A look at female film editors featuring Kate Amend, Mona Davis, Penelope Falk, Dana Glauberman, Mary Lampson, Mary Jo Markey, Kim Roberts, and Alyse Ardell Spiegel.
The ‘Invisible Art’: A Woman’s Touch Behind the Scenes–Kim Roberts, Kate Amend and Other Female Film Editors – The PDF of the above item
Top Directors Reveal How Female Film Editors Shaped Their Movies by Scott Feinberg at HollywoodReporter.com
A look back at the invaluable contributions to motion pictures of female film editors, past and present, which have been largely cut out of the history books.
Women at the Helm by Grace Wilcox in the Detroit Free Press, Sunday, December 26, 1937
1937 newspaper article about women finding success in Hollywood, featuring editors Anne Bauchen, Irene Morra, and Barbara McLean.
Women Film Editors: Shedding the Cloak of Invisibility by Beth Accomando on RogerEbert.com, March 09, 2022
APPARATUS JOURNAL articles
In 2018, Apparatus Journal published two issues devoted to women editors from Central and Eastern Europe. These are the links to all the relevant articles from both issues.
Women at the Editing Table: Revising Soviet Film History of the 1920s and 1930s, Apparatus Journal, No. 6, 2018
Editorial: Recognising Women’s Work as Creative Work by Karen Pearlman and Adelheid Heftberger
Creative Editing: Svilova and Vertov’s Distributed Cognition by Karen Pearlman, John MacKay and John Sutton
Film Editing as Women’s Work: Ėsfir’ Shub, Elizaveta Svilova, and the Culture of Soviet Montage by Lilya Kaganovsky
The Disappearing Theoretician: From Anna Li to A.N. Pudovkina by Natalie Ryabchikova
Stekliannyi Glaz (The Glass Eye) and Karmen – The Actress, Editor and Director Lilia Brik by Adelheid Heftberger
Women Cutting Movies: Editors from East and Central Europe, Apparatus Journal, No. 7, 2018
Editorial: On Making the Work of Women Editors Visible by Adelheid Heftberger and Ana Grgic
Radojka Tanhofer, Croatia’s Pioneering Film Editor by Jelena Modrić
Authoring From the Shadows: Creativity and the Film Archive in The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu by Raluca Iacob
When Women Call the Cuts: the Marina Razbezhkina School of Documentary Film by Daria Shembel
In the Fictional Shadow of Post-Production? The Silenced Creative Community and Gender Hyper(in)visibility Among Film Editors in Contemporary Russia by Anastasia Khodyreva
Rhythmic Trajectories – Visualizing Cinematic Rhythm in Film Sequences by Szilvia Ruszev
About women filmmakers
15 Women of Cinema History You Should Know by Kristy Puchko at MentalFloss.com
Women editors and other filmmakers who shaped cinema into what it is today.
A Brief History of Women’s Film-making in Mainland China by Lidan Hu at Wagic.org
An overview of key events and figures in the history of women’s filmmaking in China.
A century ago with Mary Pickford and Frances Marion: powerful and influential women in early Hollywood by Leo Verswijver at FilmTalk.org
A look at early women filmmakers and those who have followed in their footsteps, with a focus on screenwriting.
A History of Women’s Filmmaking at the National Film Board of Canada
Film Success Means Stardom, but Infrequently in the Rocky Mountain Telegram, Sunday, November 1, 1953
1953 newspaper article about jobs available to women in Hollywood.
Twenty Badass Women In Cinema You Have Probably Never Heard Of at WMFIndia.com
An international list of great women editors and other filmmakers.
You Know These 20 Movies. Now Meet the Women Behind Them by Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott at NYTimes.com (see links below)
A list of key women editors and other filmmakers throughout history, including the editors Dede Allen and Margaret Booth.
You Know These 20 Movies. Now Meet the Women Behind Them — the online version
You Know These 20 Movies. Now Meet the Women Behind Them — the PDF version
ONLINE VIDEOS & RADIO PROGRAMS
About women editors
Suzanne Baily has been working for five years on a project about her favourite women film editors and the art of editing itself, which you can find at www.invisiblewomen.org.
And the feature documentary, Invisible Women, (2025, 1:45 mins.) contains sections of all her individual films and is now available for free on YouTube.
Editors on Editing
Directed by Ally Acker
Video about women in film editing featuring extensive interviews with Allen, Booth, and Littleton. (Accessing this video requires a Kanopy subscription.)
Tercer Acte: Muntadores by Ingrid Guardiola & Marta Sureda at Vimeo.com
Video about women film editors, part of a series on women filmmakers (in Spanish & Catalan).
The Pioneering women behind the invisible art of film editing by Marc Rivers on NPR, March 9, 2024. Interview with Su Friedrich
About women filmmakers
The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem
Directed by Caroline Suh
A series of documentary short films about the gender gap in the Hollywood film industry. (Requires an Epix subscription.)
Women Pioneers of Cinema: In the Margin of the Industry by Ingrid Guardiola & Marta Sureda at Soy Cámara’s YouTube page
Video about pioneering women filmmakers (in Spanish & Catalan).
BOOKS
About women editors
Women Film Editors: Unseen Artists of American Cinema by David Meuel
A look at how women were pushed out of roles in the film industry in the 1920s, but many female film editors still rose to the top of their profession and impacted cinema throughout the twentieth century. Features Anne Bauchens, Margaret Booth, Anne V. Coates, Verna Fields, Viola Lawrence, Barbara McLean, Thelma Schoonmaker, Dorothy Spencer, and a final chapter titled “Quick Cuts: Nine Other Women Who’ve Left a Memorable Mark On US Film Editing”.
PLEASE NOTE: There are PDFs of the chapters about each of the women listed above (who each have a page on the website) in their entries in Appendix A.
My Life is the Cinema, translated by Keith Sanborn (2025, Sticking Place Books, 532 pages) brings to English readers for the first time the memoirs and selected writings of Esfir’ Il’iinichna Shub, the pioneering Soviet filmmaker whose archival works transformed the practice of documentary cinema.
MISCELLANEOUS
African Women in Cinema Blog
A public forum for the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema with articles on diverse topics relating to African women filmmakers.
Directed by Women
Searchable index of women film directors with links to a variety of other websites and social media accounts.
Et la femme créa Hollywood
Directed by Clara Kuperberg & Julia Kuperberg
Documentary film about women in the early days of Hollywood (in French & English).
Great Women Animators
Index of women animators.
The Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana.edu
Indiana University Bloomington program dedicated to collecting, preserving, and making available historically and culturally significant films by and about black people.
Women Film Pioneers Project Overview Essays at Columbia.edu
Numerous essays about the history of women working in the early days of cinema.
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Many thanks to Michael Jorgensen, Charlotte Maher Levy and Lilli Dekker and for their work in compiling this appendix.
