He began his film editing career working with Peter Mettler in an abandoned hotel outside Zurich on the feature documentary Gambling, Gods and LSD, tackling hundreds of hours of film and video to produce a fifty-two-hour assembly edit and a three-hour film.[1] Of this period, Mettler would later remark, “I’ve never lived together with anybody as intensively as Roland. … He edited the day shift and I’d edit the night shift and we’d converse and show each other things in-between.”[2]
Speaking of his contributions to Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, director Jennifer Baichwal said, “The quarry scene was interesting because it was Roland’s idea, our editor, to use the opera [Mozart’s Don Giovanni]. At first, I thought, ‘it’s drawing too much attention to itself,’ but then I grew to love it because there is something so epic about that environment.”[3] (The segment sets activity at the cavernous Carrara marble quarries in Italy to the second act of the opera, in which a statue takes its revenge on an unrepentant Don Giovanni.)
He works predominantly but not exclusively on documentary films and describes his approach to film editing with analogies to writing and music composition, stressing the importance of early-stage assemblies. In an interview published in 2012, he elaborated, “Assembly is a crucial stage because it's an exploration of the material, a time to experiment a bit, but importantly a way of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the material, what it might offer the film. The discussion about structure is based on the assemblies. … I work on a lot of unscripted material. This is the model of filmmaking wherein the activity in the editing room becomes something like the writing process, except that it's a process of juggling images, sounds, motions, words, music, etc. … it's important with these types of films to have the time to make it work.”[4]
His film credits also include writing and music composition (Trouble in the Peace, Watermark, Manufactured Landscapes, and others). In addition to music for films, Schlimme produces music as Rewaver (along with Joseph Doane).
Schlimme mentors and lectures occasionally (including masterclasses at the Documentary Media MFA program at Toronto Metropolitan University) and in 2012 he inaugurated the “Creative Editing and Sound” undergraduate course at Toronto Metropolitan University.[5]
Accolades
The films Schlimme has edited have been featured at TIFF nine times (including a Gala, a Special Presentation, and the Master's Programme) and at Hot Docs eight times (including an Opening Night Gala). Among many international accolades, they’ve won two Canadian Screen Awards for Best Feature Documentary (Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2019; Watermark in 2014), two Genies for Best Documentary (Manufactured Landscapes in 2006; Gambling, Gods and LSD in 2002), a Genie for Best Arts Documentary (National Parks Project in 2011), and an International Emmy for Outstanding Documentary (Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles in 1999).
^"L’assemblage est une étape cruciale parce que c’est une exploration du matériel, un temps que l’on s’alloue pour faire quelques expérimentations, mais c’est surtout l’occasion d’évaluer les forces et les faiblesses du matériel, de voir ce qu’elles peuvent apporter au film. On a discuté ensuite de la structure à l’aide des assemblages. … Je travaille beaucoup avec un matériel non scénarisé. Cette façon de faire des films fait en sorte que l’activité dans la salle de montage se rapproche du processus d’écriture, excepté qu’il s’agit là de jongler avec des images, des sons, des mouvements, des mots, de la musique, etc. … Donc, il est essentiel avec ce genre de films de se donner le temps d’arriver à un résultat qui tienne le coup." Interview by Catherine Martin, “Roland Schlimme: Profession Monteur”. ‘’24 images”, Number 157, 2012.
