Applications for our 2014 Helen Hill Award will appear here in 2013.
Questions? dan.streible@nyu.edu and/or Laura Kissel
The 2012 Helen Hill Award recipients
For the 8th Orphan Film Symposium New York University, University of South Carolina, Kodak, and the Nickelodeon Theatre of Columbia presented the 2012 Helen Hill Award to independent filmmakers Jo Dery and Jeanne Liotta. The Award honors the legacy of artist Helen Hill and her accomplishments as a filmmaker, educator, and animator. It supports independent filmmakers of exceptional talent whose works celebrate and embody Hill’s creative spirit, passion, and activism.
Jo Dery engages with a variety of media, in both experimental and narrative modes: animated film and video, drawing, illustration, installation, and artist books. She holds a BFA in Film/Animation/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Goddard College. She began teaching animation at DePaul University’s School of Cinema and Interactive Media in 2011. Jurors for the award found Dery's 16mm film Echoes of Bats and Men (2005) and her "paper puppet and computer animation" Woodpecker in Snowshoes (2008) of particular distinction. Her work is viewable online at JoDery.com.
Jeanne Liotta’s creative work includes more than 30 pieces -- including Super 8 films, 16mm films, digital video, and virtual Second Life. Her first film, Blue Moon, was preserved for this occasion by Bill Brand of BB Optics and NYU graduate students in the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. Liotta has been on the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder since 2008. Film Comment named Liotta's Observando del Cielo (2007) one of the ten best experimental films of the decade. Her work can be viewed at JeanneLiotta.net.
Both designed a T-shirt for Orphans 8, Dery with an image adapted from Echoes of Bats and Men and Liotta with a frame from Eclipse (2005), her film that appears on the symposium's DVD.
Susan Selig (Kodak) and Laura Kissel (U of South Carolina) conferred the awards, which included $1,000 worth of Kodak film.
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Helen Hill Awards for 2010: Jodie Mack and Danielle Ash. Read more...
Sample their work at DanielleAsh.com and vimeo.com/JodieMack
Awards for 2008:
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This award honors work that affirms Helen Hill's artistic legacy, lived values, and everyday passions. In a film culture dominated by corporate interests and the values of consumerism, the Helen Hill Award supports radically independent, innovative filmmaking of exceptional talent. The award will go to filmmakers whose work celebrates and embodies such things as creativity, self-expression, animation, small-gauge film, homemade movies (and all things made by hand), collaboration, generosity, liberal spirituality, activism, love, play, community, and connection.
Contributions are best as checks payable to:THE NICKELODEON THEATRE
Mail checks to:
Laura Kissel, Director
Film & Media Studies Program
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Questions? dan.streible@nyu.edu.