MICHAEL SAIA

Michael Saia is a film editor with studios in NYC and the Hudson Valley. His career path began with music studies at NYC’s Hunter College and found it’s way into sound editing and eventually film editing; beginning in 1984 with director Bill Miller at Bostonia/Spotwise Productions in Boston. Soon after, he began cutting commercials and music videos in NYC and founded the award winning bi-coastal editorial shop jumP, where he worked with with directors including among many others, Jeff Preiss, Gerard De Thames, Lance Accord, Ben Briand, Michael Karbelnikoff and James Gartner as well as virtually every ad agency in NY, the Midwest and LA. There, he also cut short films including James Gartner’s acclaimed Vuelo, branded shorts for director Ben Briand, and Anthony Furlong among others. His documentary work includes 2009’s Living The Legacy, directed by Academy Award winner Cynthia Wade and 2014’s Mission Congo, directed by Lara Zizic and David Turner, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has since screened at DOC NYC, and at IDFA in Amsterdam.
His first narrative feature film as editor was Jeff Preiss’s Low Down starring Elle Fanning, John Hawkes and Glenn Close which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014, where it won the jury prize for cinematography as well as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival where Ms. Fanning took the best actress award. He was a contributing Editor on James Gartner’s 2006 feature film Glory Road and more recently his multi-channel installation work with Dara Birnbaum has been exhibited at Marian Goodman Galleries in NYC and Paris, the Miller ICA and Fondazione Prada/Milan Osservatorio.
A two channel installation with Judith Barry, was exhibited at Lumiar Cite in Lisbon in 2020. He edited Leigh Ledare’s film The Task, which first exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 and subsequently screened internationally at the True/False festival, Sheffield Doc Fest, BAM CinemaFest, American Academy Rome, the Hessel Museum and is currently available on the Criterion Channel. Editing again with Ledare, NA JA exhibited at Meyer Riegger Gallery, Berlin in 2021 and Galerie Michéle Didier, Paris in 2022.
Cutting Mathias Kessler’s film Das Resort, (originally exhibited at Kunsthaus Graz -Graz, Austria) led to awards (best short film, best experimental film, best in show) at Berlin Shorts, Seattle Film Festival, Montreal Independent Film Festival, Independent Shorts Awards Amsterdam Lift-off Festival and Phoenix Shorts.
He has recently completed work on a new studio in Germantown NY.