Helen Hill

Madame Winger wants you to make a film about something you love. She shows you her favorite low budget filmmaking techniques, from cameraless animation to processing your own film in a bathtub. Filmed in 16 mm.

"Filmed in 16mm and hand processed in a week at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm in Canada, this film was a treasure map to lead my husband to his gift, a little pet pig." ⁠— Helen Hill

A man visits the world's smallest fair, where he learns a valuable lesson about life and poison cotton candy.

Rain Dance is a four-minute animation produced by Hill while an undergraduate student at Harvard University from 1988-1992; the exact date of the production is currently unidentified. Although little known, the film is representative of both Hill’s do-it yourself approach – employing character cutouts, strong, yet playful colors, and a narrative and technical simplicity rich with charm – and her jovial demeanor and inquisitive approach to life. The film is dedicated to Elijah Aron, Hill’s boyfriend throughout college. Aron remained close friends with Helen and her husband Paul Gailiunas, and was the godfather of their son Francis.

Helen Hill remembers her grandfather just before his death (in part) by a metaphor involving him as a rapidly diminishing mouse.

Inspired by a poem.

Mid-City, New Orleans - the bottom of the bowl. A filmmaker restores what she can of her soggy home movies, which sat in floodwater for three weeks. Another filmmaker shoots the same compositions in the same neighborhood, now abandoned, 10 months after the flood. Edited together they provide a testament to the slow nature of New Orleans’s recovery and its missing populace.

GOOD LUCK FILM FOR TRAVEL. Hand processed at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm in Ontario.

A documentary unlike any other, The Moody Brood explodes the myth of the idealized, normal family-a popular and pervasive post-WWII notion. The film examines issues universal to all families: the effects of community and religion, the influence of siblings, and the moral standards imposed by parents. Award-winning filmmaker Lulu Keating traces the lives of her 10 siblings from their childhood in the 1940s to present day, from a small Catholic community to the world stage. Along the way, she asks some difficult questions: Can we, as adults, shed past experiences? Or do they shape our whole lives?

Scratch and Crow is a student film by Helen Hill made at the California Institute of the Arts. It is filled with vivid color and a light sense of humor. It is also a poetic and spiritual homage to animals and the human soul

A visual genealogy for Helen's potbellied pig Rosabella Bridle King. Hand processed black and white live action and drawing on film (2000). Made at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm.

Experimental Animator Helen Hill found more than 100 handmade dresses in a trash pile on one Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. She set out to make a film about the dressmaker, an African-American seamstress who had recently passed away. The dresses and much of the film footage were later flood-damaged by Hurricane Katrina while Helen was still working on the film. Helen was murdered in a home invasion in New Orleans in 2007. Her husband Paul Gailiunas has completed the film, which includes Helen's original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies.

A whimsical lesson in love from Helen Hill.

A tribute to Halifax.

Nola was born in New Orleans and lived most of her life in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She finally returned to her hometown in 2001. Filmed in 16 mm.