Jonathan Oppenheim, ‘Paris Is Burning’ Film Editor, Dies at

Jonathan Oppenheim, an editor on traditional documentary movies reminiscent of 199o’s “Paris Is Burning,” has died at age 67.

Oppenehim died of mind most cancers in New York City on July 16, in keeping with the Sundance Institute, the place he had lengthy served as a fellow and adviser. No reason for loss of life was given.

Oppenheim edited and co-produced the second movie in director Laura Poitras’ post-9/11 trilogy, “The Oath,” which was a psychological portrait of Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard. He gained a Peabody Award for the 1987 movie “Arguing the World,” about 4 Jewish intellectuals educated at New York City College within the 1930s who every grew to become distinguished figures with starkly totally different viewpoints.

Among his extra notable enhancing credit are 2001’s “Children Underground,” 2002’s “Sister Helen,” a few nun working with prisoners on loss of life row, 2013’s “Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner,” in regards to the actor who seems in Louis Malle’s acclaimed 1981 movie “My Dinner With Andre.” Most just lately, he edited the documentaries “In the Land of Pomegranates” and “Blowin’ Up,” each in 2018.

He’s additionally served as a narrative advisor on such movies as 2012’s “How to Survive a Plague,” 2012’s “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” 2013’s “These Birds Walk,” 2015’s “(T)error,” 2016’s “The Cinema Travelers,” and 2016’s “Risk.”

Oppenheim has spoken on the artwork of documentary enhancing at “The New Museum” and has mentored Eastern European filmmakers on the Ex Oriente Lab in Prague. He was additionally a juror for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary competitors and has been an advisor and fellow on the Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab, in addition to presenting at NYU, Yale, Columbia, and The New School.

“Jonathan began his life in the arts as a painter which informed his sensibility in film,” his spouse, Josie Oppenheim, mentioned in an announcement. “He was a talented and highly original painter but documentary film was his chosen medium. The collaborative dynamic while not always peaceful was one aspect of the work that Jonathan loved. But he found an outlet for his intellectual and artistic talents in all aspects of documentary film. I can say, as well, that the film community was  profoundly important to him, and served as a nurturing soil allowing his very great talents to come into flower. But the community was important to us both really; friendships he forged became our friendships and our daughter’s family; became our community as we moved through our lives together.”

In addition to Josie, he’s survived by his daughter, Netalia.