The Editor as Co-Writer with Khalid Shamis

Writing, it is famously said in filmmaking, is rewriting. If that is the case, then editors would insist that editing, the process of piecing visuals and sounds into a whole, is the final rewrite. That writing is merely an extension of the writing process. So much so that one Hollywood editor has referred to editing as “the writing in documentary films”.

It is this final step of writing and authorship of a film or series that multi-award-winning filmmaker Khalid Shamis will discuss in his conversation with writers. It is a topic that has inspired countless books and coffee shop debates. Khalid does not claim to have or that he will offer a definitive answer. But basing his talk on a quarter century of editing, he will seek to reinvigorate the discussion, and offer writers an editor’s perspective on the many layers of filmmaking and storytelling.

Webinar details

Date: Saturday 12 July 2025
Time: 10:00 to 12:00 SAST

Location: Online (Zoom link sent by 12pm, 11 July 2025 – Please add communications@writersguildsa.org to your contact list)

NB: Registration is essential. WGSA members may attend free of charge. We also invite members of our sister organisations Safrea and DFA to attend free of charge. Non-members pay R 75.00.

Meet your Speaker

London-born Libyan-Capetonian, Khalid is a documentary director, producer and editor with a filmmaking practice spanning over more than 25 years. Having studied film language in London Khalid has worked in the film industries of the UK, Middle East and Southern Africa. Khalid works and researches as a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape.

Khalid is founder and director of Rough Cut Lab Africa RCLA, a support programme for African documentaries at the rough-cut stage.

Khalid’s practice is strongly dedicated to the pedagogy of independent filmmaking and story construction in Africa, teaching and consulting in and outside film institutions and organised frameworks. He describes his practice as moving at vastly different paces while his own films have taken several years to finish. Khalid constructs and completes numerous films every year as an editor, turning his practice into “A strange place of directing directors, guiding first time filmmakers, imbibing worlds alien to [his] own, containing and creating another’s vision, manifesting the dreams of the subjects in the films and being taken by the voice of the material itself”.