Muriel Murch and Walter Murch in conversation with Davia Nelson

Muriel Murch and Walter Murch in conversation with Davia Nelson

Spend an afternoon with the dynamic-duo of Muriel Murch and Walter Murch as City Lights celebrates the publication of their two new books.

Harvesting History: While Farming the Flats

By Muriel Murch

published by Sibylline Press

Suddenly Something Clicked: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design

By Walter Murch

published by Faber & Faber

About Harvesting History:

Blending the themes of family, farming, and filmmaking, Harvesting History follows Muriel Murch's journey from Los Angeles to West Marin, where she and her husband, filmmaker Walter Murch, settle on a farm.

Here, their life intertwines with a changing community, organic farming, and the Bay Area’s burgeoning independent film scene, including interactions with key figures from the independent film movement, including George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, close friends and collaborators of Walter.

Murch reflects on the cycles of nature, community resilience, and a simpler, sustainable way of life, contrasting it with the fast pace of Hollywood and urban development. The book is a poetic tribute to both the land and the bonds formed through shared values of preservation and creativity.

About Suddenly Something Clicked:

Highly lauded film editor, director, writer and sound designer Walter Murch reflects on the six decades of cinematic history he has been a considerable contributor to - and on what makes great films great.

Together with Francis Coppola and George Lucas, Murch abandoned Hollywood in 1969 and moved to San Francisco to create the Zoetrope studio. Their vision was of a new kind of cinema for a new generation of film-goers. Murch's subsequent contributions in film editing rooms and sound-mixing theatres were responsible for ground-breaking technical and creative innovations.

In this book, Murch invites readers on a voyage of discovery through film, with a mixture of personal stories, meditations on his own creative tactics and strategies, and reminiscences from working on The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Lucas' American Graffiti, and Anthony Minghella's The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley. Suddenly Something Clicked is a book that will change the way you watch movies.

Muriel A. Murch was born and grew up England. In 1965 she married Walter Murch in New York City and they motorcycled to Los Angeles, California, relocating to the Bay Area in 1969 where Murch began working as a nurse-midwife in the rural medical practice in Point Reyes Station serving Marin and Sonoma Counties. Initially part of KPFA-FM’s Drama and Literature Department, Murch brought her radio experience to KWMR, helping develop a platform for local voices and cultural programs. Highlights include interviews with prominent figures like Sir David Attenborough, whom she hosted at both KPFA and West Marin Community Radio, bringing his work on The Private Life of Plants to local audiences. She continues to biweekly produce A Letter From A Broad for KWMR.org and her website murielmurch.com. She lives with her husband in Northern California and London.

Walter Murch is best known as the Sound Designer and Picture Editor of The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Julia and The English Patient. He has had a career in movies that stretches across fifty years, including his involvement in setting up Zeotrope studios with Francis Coppola and George Lucas in San Francisco in the late '60s. . He has had a career in movies that stretches across fifty years, including his involvement in setting up Zeotrope studios with Francis Coppola and George Lucas in San Francisco in the late '60s. He is the author of In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing. He lives between California and London.

Davia Nelson is a radio producer, screenwriter and casting director. She is one half of The Kitchen Sisters, producers of the award-winning series Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound, and The Sonic Memorial Project. In 2023, the Kitchen Sisters archive was acquired by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation