Ting Poo: Last News

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor“Top Gun” actor Val Kilmer surprised everyone when he revealed that for the past 40 years, he’s been capturing his life and career on video, ending up with more than 800 hours of footage.A feature documentary was the natural conclusion of his faithful chronicling, and when Kilmer mentioned that he was digitizing the footage to filmmaker Leo Scott, the idea for “Val” was hatched.Scott had been editing “The Lotus Community Workshop,” a segment starring the actor within the 2012 omnibus “The Fourth Dimension,” and ended up helping with the digitization. He also brought in collaborator and fellow editor Ting Poo (“Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405”) to make the documentary happen.

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The affecting intimacy of Val, the sometimes ethereal, often unblinking look at Val Kilmer’s life and career through personal home footage, was a reflection of the actor’s unselfconscious ease, both on camera and in life, according to the documentary’s filmmakers.

It is the actor’s great struggle to take their work seriously without taking themselves seriously. To selectively activate the mechanisms of emotion in order to embody credible human behavior or an aestheticized alternative is no small task, requiring study, training, and respect.

Ting Poo, whose documentary Val will premiere at Cannes Film Festival next month, has signed with UTA.