FESTIVAL
HONORED GUESTS
Every year the LightReel Film Festival hosts special guests and honorees recognized during the festival.
2024 Honorees
Brenda Gilbert
Black Butterfly Recipient for Producing
Brenda Gilbert is the Co-Founder & President of BRON, a company she co-founded with her husband Aaron L. Gilbert in 2010. The BC-based parent company BRON Media Corp. has global divisions which include BRON Studios, BRON Creative, BRON Animation, BRON Releasing, BRON Digital, BRON Life, and an affiliate media fund, BRON Ventures. Brenda previously served as President of BRON Animation, where she produced and recently delivered the original animated film The Willoughbys to Netflix. Currently, her focus is on BRON Life, the company’s non-scripted division, where she’s passionate about giving a voice to those who need one.
Much of Brenda’s time is also spent on BRON’s charitable initiatives and on being a BRON ambassador to the world. She sits on the board of Film Independent, is the track chair for mentoring initiatives with Women in Animation, and is an advisor to the Vancouver Film School and La Salle College. Over her 20 years in the media and entertainment space, Gilbert has produced or executive produced several animated and live-action films, including The Joker, The Birth of a Nation, Monster, Assassination Nation, and The Nightingale. Her background includes many years at the British Columbia Securities Commission where she worked in the Finance, Enforcement, Legal & Communications Divisions.
Stephanie Filo
Black Butterfly Recipient for Editing
Stephanie Filo, ACE is a four-time Emmy, as well as Peabody and ACE Eddie Award-winning Film/Television Editor and activist based in Los Angeles, CA, and Sierra Leone, West Africa. She serves on the board for Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone, a social impact and feminist-based organization for Sierra Leonean girls aged 11-16. She is one of the co-founders of End Ebola Now, an organization created in 2014 to spread accurate information and awareness about the Ebola Virus and its impact through artistic community activism.
Aside from editing television and film, Stephanie spends much of her spare time producing and editing social action campaigns and documentaries, primarily focused on the rights of women and girls worldwide. In 2021, she won a Primetime Emmy award for her work on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show", making her team the first all-Women of Color editing team to take home the award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming. In 2022, she made history again as a member of the first all-black editing team to be nominated for and win both an Emmy and an ACE Eddie for "A Black Lady Sketch Show". Most recently in 2023, she has made history again, as the first Picture Editor and first Black editor to ever be Emmy nominated for 3 different series at the same time.
Mia Neal
Black Butterfly Recipient for Hair & Makeup
Mia Neal is an award-winning wig designer hailing from Gary, Indiana. With an impressive list of accolades under her belt, including an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling and a BAFTA Film Award for her work on Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Mia is a force to be reckoned with in the world of stage and screen.
Her talents have been recognized not only by the Academy, but also with an Emmy for Annie Live!, an Emmy nomination for Pose, and Drama Desk Awards for Shuffle Along… and Ain't No Mo'. Mia's work can also be seen on the brightest stages of Broadway, with productions such as The Notebook, Hell's Kitchen, Shucked, KPOP, 1776, West Side Story, The Iceman Cometh, and A Raisin in the Sun.
In addition to her work in theater, Mia has also left her mark on the big screen with films like White Noise, Hustle, The Humans, Uncut Gems, Ghostbusters, Younger, The Carrie Diaries, and The Amazing Spider-Man.
With a keen eye for detail and a passion for her craft, Mia Neal continues to push boundaries and set new standards for excellence in wig design.
Dr. Myrtis Bedolla
Black Butterfly Recipient for Art
Myrtis Bedolla is the owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis, an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century American art with a focus on work created by African American artists. Bedolla possesses over 30 years of experience as a curator, gallerist, and art consultant.
Established in 2006, the mission of the gallery is to utilize the visual arts to raise awareness for artists who deserve recognition for their contributions in artistically portraying our cultural, social, historical, and political landscapes; and to recognize art movements that paved the way for freedom of artistic expression.
Bedolla has recently gained national press in the New York Times article “Black Gallerists Press Forward Despite a Market That Holds Them Back” in June 2020 and authored “Why My Blackness is Not a Threat to your Whiteness” in Cultured Magazine in July 2020. Past coverage also includes being voted Best Gallery by the Baltimore Sun in 2017; “Black Art in the Spotlight,” Baltimore Magazine, September 2018; “Living with Art: Myrtis Bedolla Builds a Home and Gallery in Old Goucher,” BMORE Art, Issue 3; “Women in the Arts,” which honored women at the helm of the Baltimore art scene, Baltimore Style Magazine, October 2013.