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.
Inspired by a poem.
A man visits the world's smallest fair, where he learns a valuable lesson about life and poison cotton candy.
A whimsical lesson in love from Helen Hill.
Home-video footage of infants playing transforms into an experimental display of rotoscope animation.
Helen Hill remembers her grandfather just before his death (in part) by a metaphor involving him as a rapidly diminishing mouse.
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.
A tribute to Halifax.
A little man lives in an old suitcase. One day he finds a new friend - an old blind man. The little man jumps into the blind man's pocket. With music, the pocket man helps the blind man walk and see things in the street. Both are very happy together.
When a sweet and innocent parakeet is found inexplicably dead in her cage, all fingers seem to point towards cat Rodney. To prove his innocence, he desperately tries to put the blame on others, with disastrous consequences.
Wendy Tilby's Tables of Content was her graduation film from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver in 1986. The movie transports one into another era, an earlier age of gentility and reticence, set in a rather stuffy restaurant during the day.
Camille's life is ruled by the ring of the alarm clock each morning. Her well-ordered life consists of preparing her cat's meals, and hearing the familiar sound of the automatic till in the store where she works as the cashier. But one day, a man enters her home without her knowing and starts living there during the day while she's at work. Little by little, he will free her from her chains.
A cupcake escapes a city of sweets and is marooned on an island with vegetables where he learns to reform his destructive ways in this tasty stop-motion from the talented Kirsten Lepore.
A girl journeys through a vibrant, pulsing, macrocosmic landscape, but a precipitous incident compels her to venture up a mountain in an attempt to save herself. A story about illness, perseverance, and our connection to everything around us.
Oscar is a small fish whose big aspirations often get him into trouble. Meanwhile, Lenny is a great white shark with a surprising secret that no sea creature would guess: He's a vegetarian. When a lie turns Oscar into an improbable hero and Lenny becomes an outcast, the two form an unlikely friendship.
Blackout is a short, animated documentary about the 2003 power failure in much of the eastern seaboard of the U.S and Canada for up to 4 days.
What if, instead of bombs, we dropped watermelons? Dreamy and hopeful, this animated short sweeps us up into a colourful world where layers of reality and creativity intersect. Our protagonist navigates through it all seamlessly, and in the process shows us the importance of imagination.
Paper sample books discarded and dumpstered by long-gone businesses undergo a series of sequential experiments in pattern, rhythm, colour and text(ure). A call and response of flickering and lingering, this catalogue of catalogues remembers a tactile economy.
'Tie-dye' film study. Psychedelic patterns and colours mix on the various materials then explode onto the retina. The 16mm material perfectly captures the details of the materials.
A shiny otherworld of holographic reverie pairs dollar store gift bags and haunting resound, unfolding an effervescent melancholy in three parts. Mesmerising RGB bling-bling for the cinema, featuring compositions for bowed vibraphone by Elliot Cole.