Helen Hill

Image via WikipediaHelen Hill was a great filmmaker (among many other talents) who was murdered in 2007 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She was also an acquaintance, and because of that I've been following the progress of her husband Paul Gailiunas as he has been completing her final film. He's done, the film is now touring. There's a grand, big showing in Columbia, SC on April 16th - Helen was from SC and that's where we first met. Here's a note from Paul about the film. If you live anywhere near SC, I highly recommend making the road trip for this special evening.

"This is to announce that The Florestine Collection, the film Helen Hill started in 2001, has been finished and will have its first two screenings very soon. Helen began this project after she found more than 100 handsewn dresses in a trash pile soon after she and I moved to New Orleans from Canada. She wanted to find out more about the seamstress and make a film about her.

She received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and continued to work on the film as a new mother and then after Hurricane Katrina, which ruined a lot of the material she had already filmed.

After Helen was murdered in January 2007, I decided that I wanted to finish the film that she devoted much of her energy to. I got an incredible amount of help and support from our friends and family, and I recently completed it as a 16 mm film print, which is how Helen liked to screen her films.

The final result is a 31 minute experimental documentary that includes Helen's beautiful silhouette and cut-out puppet animation, as well as re-printed flood-damaged home movies.

Helen put a lot of love and energy into The Florestine Collection, and she was very determined to finish it. I am glad to at least be able to present my interpretation of Helen's vision for the film."
- Paul G.

The film shows:
Saturday, April 16
Indie Grits Film Festival
Columbia, South Carolina

It also showed recently at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Thanks Paul. We all miss Helen, and we're all excited that you've helped interpret her vision and have completed this film. I hope many film festivals and exhibition venues book the film for further screenings soon.

Mimi and Eunice and Nina Paley

I bumped into Nina Paley the other night and she handed me a cool new comic she's doing called Mimi and Eunice. Like her past work, it's pretty amazing. Here's one of my favorite panels:



But don't worry, they aren't all about piracy. Here's another great one:



Per usual, Nina is releasing this work naturally. Some would call it through creative commons, or copy-left, but I say naturally because it's just the common-sensical, natural way such creativity should be put out there, shared and (hopefully) when liked, compensated. Exploring the site, I also found this great video she did for the EFF. What a creative way to summate many of the troubles of the web today. Check it out and if you like it, support her work! (honesty alert: I haven't yet, but plan to do so myself). If I ran a foundation that supported freedom of expression, artistry, innovation, creativity and culture, public service media and had an emphasis on policy, I'd give her a huge grant since she covers all my bases....creatively. But I don't.

Adventures in Plymptoons!

Thanks to the power of social networking, I was alerted that one of my online "friends" - someone I've never met, but hope to someday - is doing a pretty cool documentary project on the great animator (and real world acquaintance, if not friend) Bill Plympton. The filmmaker, Alexia Anastasio, sent me to her Kickstarter campaign where she is trying to raise funds for the film.

I get a lot of these emails, and while I check them all out, I rarely have time to give a plug even to the good ones, but I watched her video and I really like it. It's also clear that she has the support of Plympton - he's very much a part of her campaign, so I figured I'd tweet about it soon. Today I woke up, however, and saw this great post from Bill himself over at Ted Hope's blog where he talks about being a serious animator and the trials and tribulations of releasing a good, grown-up animation today. I highly recommend you read his post, and it made me decide to give a plug today to this documentary.

So, check out the Kickstarter campaign. Kick in some dough (as opposed to Do) if you have the inclination. Then, go out to the IFC Center and spend some dough watching Bill's film, Idiots and Angels. If you like it, tell others, so they spend their dough and Bill can make back the money he is spending on the release. You'll get an added treat - the film is prefaced by a short Bill made called The Cow who wanted to be a Hamburger, which I saw when I was on the jury for short films at the Florida Film Festival. I loved it, the jury loved it - we gave it a prize, which qualified it for Academy consideration. You'll like the whole thing and will, hopefully, decide to go back and give more money to Alexia's Kickstarter campaign and then see Idiots and Angels again. Or so I hope.

Here's her campaign: