The Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG), Local 700 IATSE, will honor member Lillian E. Benson, ACE, with its prestigious Fellowship and Service Award on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at a dinner at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. The Fellowship and Service Award was established 10 years ago by the Guild’s Board of Directors to recognize an individual who embodies the values the Guild holds most dear: Professionalism, Collaboration, Mentorship, Generosity of Spirit and a Commitment to the Labor Movement.
“Lillian E. Benson has a had a long career editing influential and socially conscious films, and has been long active in working to increase minority participation in the filmmaking process,” commented Alan Heim, ACE, President of the Editors Guild. “In addition, she has been an active member of the Board of Directors for the American Cinema Editors [ACE] as Secretary and Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee. I am honored to have even a small part in presenting her with this richly deserved award.”
Previous recipients of this distinguished honor include Joseph A. Aredas; Donald O. Mitchell; Don Hall; Carol Littleton, ACE; IATSE International President Emeritus Thomas C. Short; Dede Allen, ACE; and Donn Cambern, ACE.
Presenting Benson with the Fellowship and Service Award will be her longtime friend and colleague Zeinabu irene Davis, a film director and producer as well as a professor in the Communications department of the University of California, San Diego. Benson has edited several of Davis’ films, including Passengers (2009) and Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant (1989).
“Lillian E. Benson has a had a long career editing influential and socially conscious films, and has been long active in working to increase minority participation in the filmmaking process,” commented Alan Heim, ACE, President of the Editors Guild. “I am honored to have even a small part in presenting her with this richly deserved award.”
ABOUT LILLIAN E. BENSON, ACE
Lillian Benson began her career in New York City and learned how to sync film dailies on her very first job — a documentary film about the first female president of Radcliffe College. Two years later, she assisted editor Joe Staton on Vegetable Soup, the multi-cultural children’s television series, and became a member of the Editors Guild. She assisted Staton on the cult comedy favorite Smile Orange, directed by Trevor Rhone (The Harder They Come), and later on TV movies directed by the legendary Gordon Parks (Solomon Northup’s Odyssey) and Bill Duke (The Killing Floor).
Like most freelance editors in New York, Benson worked on a long string of industrial films, music videos, sports programming and cultural affairs shows. For a time, she was a staff editor on the children’s series Big Blue Marble.
But it was documentary director Jacqueline Shearer who first believed in Benson’s larger talent when Shearer hired her as an editor for the acclaimed Civil Rights series Eyes on the Prize II. In 1990, Benson was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on that series and, a year later, became the first African-American female member of the American Cinema Editors, an honorary organization for film and television editors.
Benson holds an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute. She started out as a public school art teacher before leaving to explore the world of filmmaking. She returned to her teaching roots in 1988 when New York’s School of Visual Arts selected her to teach its advanced editing class.
Benson’s body of work as a television, video and feature film editor spans almost 40 years and has garnered five Emmy nominations, four Peabody Awards and numerous other honors.
Benson is presently an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and has been a guest lecturer at the Columbia College Hollywood, New York University, Stanford University, the American Film Institute, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, Xavier University, Converse College, Tufts University, The School of Visual Arts, City College of New York and the Brooklyn Museum. She moderated and/or participated in numerous documentary panels at film festivals — most recently a panel for the International Documentary Association (IDA) on women documentary editors (2014) — and was a reader/panelist for the NEH, NBPC and ITVS.
She also makes time to mentor young editors and is co-chair of ACE’s Diversity in Editing Mentoring Committee, as well as a member of the Editors Guild’s Diversity Committee.
Benson’s body of work as a television, video and feature film editor spans almost 40 years, and those projects have garnered five Emmy nominations, four Peabody Awards and numerous other honors. She is currently editing the episodic television series Chicago Med for NBC and in 2016 worked on the Oprah Winfrey/Craig Wright mega-church drama Greenleaf.
In addition, she was part of the editorial team on the documentary feature Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, which will be broadcast during the 2017 season of American Masters on PBS. She was the editor of Get In the Way: The Journey of John Lewis, a biographical documentary about one of the heroes of modern American history, also airing on PBS in 2017.
Benson made her directorial debut with All Our Sons: Fallen Heroes of 9/11, a half-hour documentary about the firefighters of color who died at the World Trade Center. It was broadcast nationally on PBS and was shown at the international film festival FESPACO, in Burkina Faso, West Africa.
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Fellowship and Service Award is an honor based upon a set of values and salutes individuals who embody those values.
She recently completed her second film, Amen: The Life and Music of Jester Hairston, a music education documentary about the composer-arranger and Hollywood trailblazer.
ABOUT THE MPEG FELLOWSHIP AND SERVICE AWARD
Most awards honor accomplishment but the Motion Picture Editors Guild Fellowship and Service Award is an honor based upon a set of values and salutes individuals who embody those values. They are: Professionalism, Collaboration, Mentorship, Generosity of Spirit and Commitment to the Labor Movement.
Professionalism may sound like it speaks for itself. But the integrity at its core must include the human values of compassion and respect for co-workers.
Perhaps the defining quality for an Editors Guild member, Collaboration should apply to one’s peers –– and future peers –– as well as to directors, producers and writers.
Mentorship is simply a form of instruction akin to friendship.
Generosity of Spirit is more than the actions one does; it is a state of being. It is the golden rule personified.
Last, but certainly not least, is Commitment to the Labor Movement. A union is two things: a set of ideals and a living, human enterprise. Being a member of a union means contributing to both of these things. It means giving help where it’s needed and being able to work with a variety of people, with various interests and dispositions. It also means moving our better interests forward as best as we can.
ABOUT THE MOTION PICTURE EDITORS GUILD
The Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG) is a national labor organization currently representing over 7,500 freelance and staff post-production professionals. MPEG is the world’s premiere craft Guild that sets the standards for excellence in the post-production industry. The requirements to become a member of the Guild and to be placed on its Industry Experience Roster ensure the highest level of professionalism
As Local 700 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), an international union over 100 years old, MPEG is allied with some 500 affiliated locals in the United States and Canada with a combined membership of more than 130,000. This strength increases its collective power at the bargaining table and results in better contracts with superior benefits.
MPEG negotiates new collective bargaining agreements (union contracts), enforces existing agreements with employers involved in post-production and provides assistance for securing better conditions — including but not limited to financial (better pay), medical (better health insurance), safety (turnaround time) and artistic (assignment of credit) concerns.
For tickets or more information, please contact Adriana Iglesias-Dietl at 323.978.1067, or aiglesias@editorsguild.com. For event sponsorships with premium tickets, tribute book ads and on-site sponsor recognition, please contact 310.207.4410 x236 or MPEGFellowshipAwards@ingledodd.com.
