I’m a London-based documentary film editor and story consultant specializing in intimate character-driven verité storytelling about human resilience and agency, and the power of art in connection and healing.
I am drawn to stories with emotional intensity, which I approach with reverence and careful attention to authenticity and dignity for film participants. I am also interested in work that is connected with social justice movements and imagining a freer future for all of us.
I come from a background as a freelance journalist and started my career directing, producing, shooting, and editing my own work. This gives me a holistic understanding of the filmmaking process: I can help shape narrative from the earliest stages, recognize when a story needs more material, and see creative possibilities others might miss. It also means I can collaborate with filmmakers at every stage of the journey.
My work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC, and has been screened and awarded at festivals such as Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Slamdance Group’s The Indies, and the One World Media Awards. It has also supported human rights activism. I’m a co-founder of Technicolour Troublemakers, an alternative networking community for gender minority filmmakers of color, and a collective member of msj—an arts residency and artist refuge for experimentation. I co-create joyfully weird immersive events with my partner and have hosted over 200 people in death dinners, facilitated gatherings where we gently explore our personal relationships to mortality.
I’m also a trained death doula and conflict resolution facilitator. If you’re looking instead for my facilitation work, click here.
artist’s statement
As a mixed-race third generation Chinese American, my identity lives in the in-between. Growing up, this meant often not feeling I fully belonged anywhere. This search for belonging has defined my life, and it’s why I’m drawn to liminal spaces in my work: the thresholds between life and death, conflict and connection, speaking and silence, grief and joy, displacement and finding home. I’m able to sit in the messy middle that is the human experience, and this holds true in both my film work and my facilitation practice. I believe that story can reveal our kinship: when we share, we are holding up metaphorical mirrors to one another, seeing our own experiences more clearly through the reflection of others.
I also believe in an ethics of care in filmmaking. While telling one’s story can be deeply healing, it can also be difficult, triggering, and complex. I believe we who hold and transmit these stories must also hold deep awareness of how storytelling methods have been, and continue to be, re-traumatizing and exploitative for some communities. The projects I work on are true collaborations with participants, co-created with person-specific dignity.
what others have said
“Rachel's approach to story is all-encompassing. She is an expert at thinking through the big picture—everything from how to approach the emotional arcs at each inflection point in order to transmit the profundity of the particular human experience at the heart of any given story... to creating the best footage log spreadsheets for the most efficient collaboration. She is equally gifted at the minutiae involved in storytelling—finding the diamonds in the rough of hundreds of hours of footage, intuitively picking up on the subtleties in verité footage, and always noticing what isn't said in a given interview, knowing that those moments often communicate the most. Each time we hit a roadblock, she'd always have ideas for solutions and she is genuinely a joy to work with. Rachel is a master of her craft and a true artist in all that she does.”
Cady Voge, director of All We Carry
“Rachel has a keen eye and ear for the elements that help a story make sense. Story building is such tender work - the smallest of shifts can alter the fundamental balance and rhythm of a piece. Rachel is able to zoom in on the smallest of bricks that can shift the overall feeling, while still holding a macro view of the entire project. She holds a rare combination of objective awareness to the overall narrative arc and a human sensitivity to the nuances of the story. She’s a strong asset for those experienced or new to the game of getting their message out to the world, and sorting out the best way to do it.
Krishna Trevor Oswalt (East Forest), director of Music for Mushrooms
