Sundance Institute's Story Forum: Exploring Art and Innovation is a space to learn, collaborate, and join the conversation; inviting thoughtful dialogue about the artist-first tools and technologies supporting visual storytelling today.
In this session, moderator Meagan Keane (Director of Product Marketing, Adobe Pro Video) takes us inside the creative process that shaped The Perfect Neighbor. Director Geeta Gandbhir and Editor Viridiana Lieberman break down how they organized and made sense of extensive footage, refined interviews, and built narrative momentum as the story evolved. This session highlights the tools, workflows, and editorial decisions that transformed raw material into a cohesive documentary, revealing how structure, iteration, and collaboration bring real-world stories into focus.
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Director, THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR
Geeta Gandbhir is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Message Pictures. Recent credits include the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Perfect Neighbor” which won the Directing Award for the US Documentary Competition and was bought by Netflix, the series “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” which premiered at #1 on Netflix, Oscar-nominated short "The Devil is Busy" for HBO, "Reclaimed" for Sesame Workshop, the Oscar Shortlisted film “How We Get Free” for HBO, the series "Born in Synanon" for Paramount, the series "Eyes on the Prize" for HBO, the feature doc "Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power," which was nominated for the 2022 Critics Choice Award, won a 2023 SIMA Award, and won a 2023 Emmy Award. She directed and show ran the series "Black and Missing" for HBO which won a 2022 NAACP Award for Best Directing, a 2022 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, a 2022 ATAS Honors Award, and a Cinema Eye Honors for Best Series. She directed the film "Apart," with Rudy Valdez for HBO Max, and won a 2022 Emmy Award.
more...Editor, THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR
Viridiana Lieberman has edited many features and series, most notably the award-winning documentaries, THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, THE SENTENCE, I AM EVIDENCE, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER, THROUGH OUR EYES: APART, and CALL CENTER BLUES. An avid women’s sports fan, her directorial debut, BORN TO PLAY, premiered on ESPN and ABC in 2020. Following a semi-professional women’s tackle football team for a season, the film was a result of her book SPORTS HEROINES ON FILM (published by McFarland) which analyzed patterns of representations of female athletes throughout film history.
more...Moderator | Director of Product Marketing, Adobe Pro Video
Meagan Keane is Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Professional Film & Video. She joined the Adobe Premiere Pro Management team in 2012 and has led business strategy across the Adobe video portfolio since 2019. While Meagan’s leadership has guided Adobe video strategies for over a decade, her beginnings were in documentary film.
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