Yaffa Lerea: Revealing the storytelling artistry of the film editor

In her early twenties, Yaffa Lerea found her calling, working at the heart of storytelling as a film and television editor. Starting her career at a post-production facility by day while taking a night course in film production at New York University, Lerea discovered her passion for editing. Since then she has been an editor on numerous films and TV series, including Ken Burns’ award-winning “Baseball,” CNN’s “The Movies,” "The Sixties," and “The Eighties,” “Project Runway,” MTV’s “The Real World,” and “Twin Towers,” which won an Academy Award as Best Short Documentary.

In just the past two years, Lerea produced CNN’s “’Tis the Season: The Holidays on Screen” and co-edited “Shot in the Arm,” a documentary about the anti-vaccine movement. She was also an editor on Amazon’s “Making the Cut” and “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” Lerea spoke to TSTB from her home in Santa Monica, California.

Photo of Yaffa -- during editing of Ken Burns' "Baseball" -- by Stephanie Berger.

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