The Work That Made Me with Nadav Kurtz
Nadav Kurtz is an award-winning editor and director whose work has shown at festivals including Sundance, True/False, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the multi-city Pop-Up Magazine Love Stories tour, as well as being showcased by The Criterion Channel, PBS’s POV, and The New York Times Op-Docs. His directorial debut, Paraíso, won Best Documentary Short at multiple international festivals and was short-listed for an Academy Award.
LBB> The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Nadav> I saw one of my first ads with my friend’s older brother - who had a mohawk and I instinctively knew was really cool - on MTV. I grew up in an alternative family overseas where we weren’t even allowed to watch TV. But when we moved to the US, MTV was first arriving on cable and when I saw one of those interstitial ads for the channel come on - the stop-motion astronaut on the moon - I was floored and hooked. After that, I’d go to my friends’ houses who had cable and we’d watch hours of MTV together.
There was this show called Liquid Television that I loved that had these funny, strange and eclectic animated shorts. It opened my eyes to all the ways you could tell stories - in a raw, experimental, visual way.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Nadav> During college, these DVD boxed sets came out that featured these amazing music video directors like Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham. I watched those DVDs over and over and over.
Those directors were pushing boundaries and making work that was visually really strong but also had playful and compelling ideas behind them. They were getting opportunities to work in a variety of mediums, music videos, ads and movies. I was studying literature and creative writing at the time and so, not being in film school, I wanted to learn all about this exciting visual language.
I started doing small projects with friends and found that I really enjoyed that time alone with the dailies. Editing felt like a place you could try all of these ideas out and the possibilities were wide open. I got a job working at a post-house as an assistant editor and cut my friends’ projects on nights and weekends and shortly after was hired at a small boutique editorial company as an editor. I was 23 at the time and that following year, I had a spot in the Super Bowl - so it all moved very fast and was very exciting.
LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Nadav> David Bowe is an artist I really admire and I like to listen to two of his albums back to back - Ziggy Stardust and Blackstar. The first is one of his first albums - which I came across in a used CD store in high school - and Blackstar is his last, released only two days before he died.
Listening to those two albums, I’m reminded of how he kept reinventing himself and finding ways to express himself through different mediums, reinventing himself throughout his career. It’s something I deeply admire and aspire to as well. Editing commercials is my main career but I also direct and express my interest in storytelling through writing too. Last year, I was lucky enough to be a performer on a Pop Up Magazine tour.
I travelled with a talented and diverse group of artists to eight cities across the US. We told our stories in these beautiful old theatres in front of a large audience with animation and film projected behind us and a band on stage playing live music. It was an amazing storytelling experience and wonderful to be part of a project that blended so many creative mediums in such a beautiful way.
LBB> My first professional project…
Nadav> When I was starting out, I collaborated a lot with an up and coming DP, Ken Seng, (who has gone on to a huge career shooting many great films, including Deadpool). We both needed work for our reels. So I wrote and edited spec spots from footage he had shot: for example, we turned 16mm mountain-climbing footage he shot on El Capitan into an Arcteryx spec spot.
We would recommend each other for jobs and worked together on a feature film called Street Thief, a fake documentary about a burglar taking down scores. It was directed and produced by two brothers from Chicago, Malik and Sam Bader.
Things took an unexpected turn after Street Thief was accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival. Five weeks before our premiere, Sam, the producer of our film, was arrested for committing a series of armed robberies with a prop gun from our movie and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. About five years ago, I ran into his son whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade.
I began filming a feature length documentary about how this father and son have stayed connected over the years and their dreams of making movies together when Sam gets out of prison. It’s a layered project, with BTS and out-takes from Street Thief’s 16mm dailies as well as the screenplay Sam and Omar are working on. Some really great people came on board, including Oscar-nominated producer Diane Quon and EP’s Jeremiah Zagar and Jeremy Yaches of Public Record.
We’ve been really fortunate in being supported by the Sundance Institute and the Marshall Project as well as many others. It’s been wonderfully full circle - to have the story behind the first feature I edited come back in the form of a feature documentary I’m directing.
LBB> The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Nadav> I’m biracial (half-Japanese) and moved here to the US in the ‘80s, so anything that puts down immigrants upsets me. I always appreciate opportunities to do work that counters those negative stereotypes. In 2018, I got a special opportunity like that when I was approached by CDs Pat Seidel and Chris Rose (currently at Highdive) for a campaign for Ogilvy, overseen by Joe Sciarrotta, to direct 35 short films for the City of Chicago as part of the One Chicago campaign.
Cutters Studios and Dictionary Films pitched in on every level - from production through post - and I conducted 10 interviews a day for four days - stories ranging from Syrian kids who came to Chicago as refugees to a French male ballet dancer. I really loved hearing all of their stories and getting to celebrate their contributions to Chicago.
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Nadav> I have a lot of admiration for people who have had eclectic careers. Hank Corwin is someone whose work opened up a lot of what I understood editing could be as a young, impressionable film viewer before I knew his name. Once I entered the industry, I became familiar with his work on commercials and music videos too. There was definitely a period early in my career when I did my best to imitate the impressionistic style he brought to a whole generation of filmmakers.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Nadav> I was in the high-rise at the Cutters’ Chicago office, deep in an edit on a commercial, when a window washer popped into my view, squeegee-ed the window and dropped out of sight. Intrigued, I started keeping my eye out for the ropes these men used to rappel down buildings and would wait for them at the bottom. I ended up meeting these brothers who became the subjects of a short documentary I made, which was a meditation on the invisible lives of these window washers who risk their lives up on these high rise buildings.
The short ended up playing at Sundance, winning several Best Documentary Short awards including at the Tribeca Film Festival, was shortlisted for an Oscar, and is now playing on the Criterion Channel. It was personally a really satisfying journey and it also created a new path for me as an editor.
A lot of my work had been visual and anthemic, but I started cutting a lot more doc-based projects and met a new group of creatives and directors through that. I remember at the time it felt risky to take time away from my commercial career but I’ve learned that these creative forays always teach me new skills and perspectives that feed back into my ad work.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Nadav> Getting older, I’m thinking more about the span of a career and I’m proud of those long term collaborations. One that stands out especially for me is the work I’ve done with Kurt Fries (ECD at Dentsu) who was an early advocate for me as an editor and became a creative collaborator and has been a creative mentor in many ways.
I first worked with Kurt when I was a young editor cutting a Coors campaign directed by Lisa Rubisch that featured a bunch of lunatics running around New York partying, set to an Andrew W.K. party song. We’ve now had a collaboration spanning two decades and so many different stories and brands (Diner’s Club, BCBS, Hallmark, Marriott, Disney and many more).
I learned a lot watching him advocate so hard for the creative integrity of the work and also seeing how he empowers all of his collaborators to do their best work.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Nadav> There are always projects early on in your career that you need to do to keep growing. I generally don’t cringe - I think it’s all about learning and there is usually some opportunity to learn from them.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Nadav> I recently did a campaign for Walt Disney World with Dentsu which captured not only the big moments (like the iconic rides) but also the spontaneous and real moments that happen in between: when you’re goofing around with your siblings or getting to see a new side of a loved one.
The campaign was directed by Daniel Mercadante of Park Pictures, whose work I’d always admired but with whom I hadn’t worked before. Daniel captured such authentic, funny and sweet moments. The edit was intense because I received over 30 hours of material and I was looking for unique single-take moments of various lengths - 6 seconds, 12 seconds, 15 seconds - whatever felt true and could sustain a stand-alone story.
The sensitivities and skills I’ve cultivated through my documentary work really came through for me on this project because of the gargantuan amount of footage. My first rough cut presentation to the creatives (Kurt Fries, Andres Arlia, and Giovanni Muratori) was close to an hour of individual spots before we then dove into shaping them into 15s, 30s, 60s etc. The campaign is grounded and real in an unexpected way and I’m excited to see how it’s being received.
