Detailed Program (TRT: approximately 60 minutes)

Rain Dance (1990, made at Harvard, restored by Bill Brand and his students in 2007) is dedicated to film/TV writer Elijah Aron who was working on a novel about Rain at the time. Aron had been a classmate of Helen Hill and Paul Gailiunas at Harvard, when Paul founded an undergraduate music group, and remained a close friend of the couple all these years. The accompanying song, written by Aron and Gailiunas, is performed by Gailiunas and Matthew Butterick, another former Harvard classmate, now a noted designer and typographer.

Vessel (1992, made at Harvard) was inspired by a poem written by Hill and first published in The Rag (Fall 1991). Hill’s silhouette puppets reflect the influence of her favorite filmmaker, Lotte Reiniger. A tea pot and sunflowers appear in the film that introduces Hill’s use of the bright colors of artists that influenced her: William Blake, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Vincent van Gogh.

The World’s Smallest Fair (1995, made at CalArts). Hill applied for an Interschool Grant to bring artists together. She had always dreamed of owning a cotton candy machine from Cromers Peanut Store (a huge party warehouse) in her home town. With the grant money she was able to purchase a cotton candy machines and 12 cans of Flossine and to produce the film. The story revolves around artists (her fellow CalArts students) using cotton candy as their medium. Gailiunas and Aron also make appearances.

Scratch and Crow (1995, made at CalArts), Hill’s MFA thesis film. While growing up, she had spent quite a bit of time at her Cousin Annie’s farm in Fairview, North Carolina, where her favorite job was to take care of the chickens. She would gather their eggs as well as carry them to find water. She even shoveled chicken manure to be sold as fertilizer. She later owned pet chickens in New Orleans and California. In Scratch and Crow, Helen remembers her chicken friends with gentle and poetic words, a rich color palette, and imaginative tropes. Cats hatch eggs; watermelons fall from the sky; chickens become angels and fly out of tombstones; coiled springs symbolize inner workings.

Tunnel of Love (1996) was made to illustrate Gailiunas and Aron’s song “Accidental Romance”. Hill called it a “romance activist” film, meant to give good advice about falling in love. It also captures the carnival atmosphere that she remembered and loved from the South Carolina State Fair. It features a tea party with CalArts friends and the Photo Booth photos that Hill collected and loved.

Film for Rosie (2000). Daisy the potbellied pig died prematurely, and soon after Hill and Gailiunas bought their second pet pig Rosie. This is Rosie’s pigeology and features all her relatives.

Mouseholes (1999) remembers Hill’s beloved grandfather, Pop. She never had a babysitter as Pop was always around to care for her. In Mouseholes, Pop’s mother and aunts lovingly greet him with a tea party in heaven. Hill's own funeral was modeled after Pop’s funeral and included the same Biblical verse as read in the film, “No eye has seen nor ear has heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man, what God has prepared for those that love him" (I Corinthians 2:19). Helen Hill was buried next to Pop.

Your New Pig Is Down the Road (1999). This love letter to Paul Gailiunas was filmed during one summer in Ontario at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm (a filmmaking workshop where she learned to hand process her own films). Hill beckons her husband to follow her down the road where his new pig waits. The film features their beloved daisies, their much respected St. Francis, and their baby pig Daisy with her little sister.

Madame Winger Makes A Film: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century (2001) was part of a group of films the Canada Council for the Arts funded on the theme of filmmaking and the new millennium. Madame Winger expresses Hill’s belief that the idea behind a film is more important than the technology used. It describes inexpensive ways to make films, including hand processing and drawing directly onto the film. Hill wrote “It’s fun to handle film as a celluloid canvas rather than as a fragile carrier of images only to be handled by lab technicians…. You can experiment and create the most beautiful images ever.” The voice of Madame Winger is that of Hill’s godmother, Meredith Pogue.

Bohemian Town (2004) illustrates Paul Gailiunas ’s song “Bohemian Town” and the couple’s love of the North End of Halifax they still remembered after they had moved to New Orleans. Gailiunas's Canadian band Piggy performs the song.

Helen Hill began creating short experimental animation films while attending Harvard University (1988-1992), where she completed her BFA degree. She further developed her artistic work while completing her MFA degree at CalArts. Upon her graduation in 1995, she moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where her husband, Paul Gailiunas, whom she had met as an undergraduate at Harvard, was attending medical school. She was one of the organizers of the Reel Vision Festival for women filmmakers and taught animation at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) and the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative (AFCOOP). Hill and Gailiunas lived in the Halifax's culturally diverse but economically depressed north end. She was a life-long peace activist and advocate of several grassroots social justice causes.

On December 17, 2000, the couple moved to New Orleans with their pets – the cat Nola and the pig Rosie. In late 2004, Hill gave birth to Francis Pop Gailiunas. She continued to teach animation through the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) and the New Orleans Film Collective, which she co-founded with other members of the local film community. During that time she also worked as a storyboard artist for the National Film Board of Canada.

Hill and family were displaced and lost most of their possessions in August 2005 due to the Hurricane Katrina levee failures, which flooded their Mid City home. After temporarily relocating back to Columbia, South Carolina for one year, they moved back to New Orleans where Hill continued both her art and her activism, which focused on helping local grassroots endeavors aimed at rebuilding the city. She was a visiting artist at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

Helen Hill was murdered about 5:30 in the morning on January 4th, 2007 by an unknown intruder in her home in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. Her husband, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, was shot three times and survived; their toddler son, Francis Pop, was uninjured. In 2004, Hill had received a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship grant; at the time of her death, she was using this award to work on a 16mm film, The Florestine Collection, about the life of a black seamstress and the racial divide in New Orleans.

For more information: www.helenhill.org/news