Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1513564
37 W I N T E R Q 4 I S S U E F E A T U R E In 2021, she and fellow editors Daysha Broadway, ACE, and Jessica Hernández, ACE, won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming for their work on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show," the first all-women-of-color editing team to take home the award. 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 the sketch comedy, which she shared with Bradinn French, ACE, Tay- lor Mason, ACE, and S. Robyn Wilson, ACE. T h i s y e a r, F i l o i s n o m i n a t e d f o r Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming for her work on "History of the World, Part II" (alongside Angel Gam- boa Bryant, Daniel Flesher, and George Mandl, ACE) and "A Black Lady Sketch S h o w " ( s h a r e d w i t h M a l i n d a Z e h n e r Guerra and Taylor Mason, ACE), as well as Outstanding Picture Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for "Dahmer - Monster: The Jerey Dahmer Story." It's Filo's "impeccable eye for visuals, tone, comedy and pacing" that showrun- ner Robin Thede appreciates most about Filo's editing work on "A Black Lady Sketch Show," which premiered in 2019. "She's a once -in-a-lifetime talent," Thede said. "Not only that, but she is incred- ibly collaborative, masterfully malleable in impossible situations, and invested in keeping the door open for many other Black women editors to follow in her illus- trious footsteps." "I can't say enough about her – and 'A Black Lady Sketch Show' would never have received all the acclaim it did without her herculean skill," Thede added. Perhaps ironically, it was Filo's graceful nature rather than her herculean skill that initially brought her to Los Angeles. Orig- inally from Sierra Leone, West Africa, she grew up in Denver, Colorado. Her first love was dance. "I lived and breathed dance," she said. "I danced six hours a day — ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, everything. As dierent as it seems from editing, I feel like dance uses the same part of your brain because you are still thinking about pacing, music and timing, and telling a story visually." In middle school and high school, she started to tinker with the family's home movie camera and VHS tapes, trying to "splice things together, not realizing that was editing at all." After earning a coveted spot as a Denver Broncos cheerleader, Filo secured an agent and moved to L.A. to pursue work in film and television. But a chance encounter led to her first professional editing job: night- time assistant editor on a documentary with editor Benjamin Meyer. "I was still dancing, but I knew I wanted to do film and TV in some capacity, and I think I just knocked on the right door," she said. "After we finished the project, he said, 'I hope you keep doing [work in] post. I hope you stay in this.'" Filo at Bolt Barbers in downtown Los Angeles. P H OT O : M A R K E D WA R D S 'I lived and breathed dance.'