EDGAR BURCKSEN, ACE, NCE (1947 – 2024)
To our great sadness, our esteemed colleague and honorary member Edgar Burcksen, ACE, NCE, passed away on Sunday, April 7.
Edgar had a successful career in the Netherlands as film editor of, among others, The Cool Lakes of Death and A Month Later (both by Nouchka van Brakel), De Dream (Pieter Verhoeff) and Left Luggage (Jeroen Krabbé). In 1985, he was awarded with the Golden Calf for Editing. He also wrote avidly about film for the Dutch magazine Skrien and was a regular and passionate teacher of film editing.
The animated series Seabert brought Edgar to Northern California, where he later worked for ILM as a visual effects editor (The Hunt for Red October), and later on, among other projects, as an editor for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles — for which he won a Prime Time Emmy Award. At that time he was also one of the pioneers in the field of digital non-linear editing.
His work slowly moved to Los Angeles, and he worked on numerous independent documentaries and feature films until he died. He also was a teacher at the Academy of Art University of San Francisco.
Edgar was a very active member – and past board member – of American Cinema Editors. As editor-in-chief, he turned CinemaEditor Magazine into a successful and globally read trade magazine for editors. For his efforts in that area, Edgar was awarded the Robert Wise Award in 2011. In recent years, he was very focused on the internationalization of American Cinema Editors, through the International Relations Committee, which he co-chaired.
Edgar was an important advisor in the run-up to the founding of the NCE, for which he became our very first honorary member in 2011. Edgar was a great advocate of international collaboration between editors. He played a very important role in the collaboration with TEMPO, and in 2018 he shared the ACE Best Practices during our general assembly. He actively sought to improve the editing profession and the reputation of editors worldwide.
In Edgar we lose an extremely committed colleague with a great passion for editing, who was always willing to share his knowledge, experience and network. We will miss him dearly.
We extend our condolences to his wife Jana and their children Branko and Romaika and wish them lots of love and strength.
