Biography from the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative:

Helen Hill is an experimental animator who began making films at the age of five. She graduated from Harvard University in 1992 with a BA in English, specializing in creative writing, and later completed her Masters in Fine Arts, with a major in Film and Video from the California Institute for the Arts in 1995. It was while obtaining her masters that Helen got her start teaching, educating inner-city kids in Los Angeles on how to make video animation. Since then Helen has gone on to teach animation techniques to people of all ages, all over North America.

In 1995 Helen came to Nova Scotia and was one of the organizers of the Reel Vision Festival for female filmmakers. She became a member of the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative as well, teaching courses in experimental animation and serving on several committees. In 1996 she was voted Nova Scotia’s Best Director in Halifax’s weekly publication The Coast. She later began to teach animation at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and doing "Fast Fax" animations for the CBC series Street Cents.

Helen has been touring her animations and Super 8 films since she was a student at CalArts, receiving honourable mention in various festivals. She was also featured on the Canadian animation network Teletoon in the Fall of 1998. Her work stands out for its eclectic use of materials, employing everything from cut-outs and puppets to a square mile of cotton candy. It was her 1999 animation Mouseholes that won Helen acclaim across Canada and the U.S., winning awards in North Carolina and Calgary, and touring across Canada, Norway and Vietnam in Chris Robinson’s State of Canadian Animation Tour.

In 2001 Helen moved to New Orleans and became a founding member and animation instructor of the New Orleans Filmmakers Cooperative. She also worked as a storyboard artist for the National Film Board of Canada during this time. She has even produced an animation entitled Madame Winger Makes A Film: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century (2002), an instructional film on, what else, making your own camera-less animation! This year Helen received the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship Grant, to complete her latest animated film The Florestine Collection.
Condolence notes, letters and flowers are appreciated. Send them to:

Becky Lewis (Helen's mom)
1432 Medway Road
Columbia, SC 29205
(803) 343-2437