A Story About Helen
A sweet story about Helen...
> As AMIA's liaison to the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives
> Association's World Day Working Group, I would like to invite AMIA members
> to share a short anecdote related to their work in the field from the past
> year - highlights, poignant moments, favorite projects - with each other on
> the AMIA listservs this week. I will be culling our shared stories to pull
> together a kind of AMIA "golden book" of activities of this past year to
> share via our new website. In this way, we can celebrate and promote the
> incredible array of work undertaken by our membership throughout the world.
Most of the highlights of my year came in putting aside my own work
for a night to be part of the audience for someone else's. First
among these was the memorial screening for Helen Hill, held at REDCAT
in Los Angeles on the Monday following my return from the AMIA
Conference. The presentation of Helen's "Rain Dance" at Archival
Screening Night in Rochester was the first I'd seen of her animation.
While I was eager to see more--to see all of it--I approached the
screening with some apprehension, feeling a little raw and wondering
how I'd hold up.
I was put at ease almost instantly. The screenings were preceded by
tributes and reminiscences from some of Helen's friends and colleagues
at CalArts, from Helen's mother Becky, and from her husband Paul.
Their son Francis Pop also said his piece, grabbing the mic from his
dad to interject "bababababababababa," setting off a call-and-response
with a friend in the audience who then joined him to dance around the
floor while Paul played some songs he and Helen had written together.
The presentations in sum were funny, loving, joyful and ebullient,
like a primer in how to approach the program to follow.
While the films themselves were wonderful*, I was conscious throughout
of watching the prints, which, had I not known better, I would have
guessed had been newly struck from the originals. But Helen's
originals were lost to flood damage from Hurricane Katrina; everything
shown here was laboriously restored from whatever work print and
well-worn release print material could be found. The prints were
their own quiet tribute to Helen from our colleagues--Russ Suniewick,
Dan Streible, Bill Brand and his NYU MIAP students, Hayden Guest,
among many others--who worked this year to ensure that her legacy as a
filmmaker would endure, and to make it so quickly and widely available
to the audiences who really needed to see it. In the context of
AMIA's first celebration of UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage,
their diligence and extraordinary generosity is a tribute also to our
profession at its best.
Brian Graney
Center for Home Movies &
Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory--UCLA Film & Television Archive
"Tunnel of Love" is still available online
at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3348217n
> As AMIA's liaison to the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives
> Association's World Day Working Group, I would like to invite AMIA members
> to share a short anecdote related to their work in the field from the past
> year - highlights, poignant moments, favorite projects - with each other on
> the AMIA listservs this week. I will be culling our shared stories to pull
> together a kind of AMIA "golden book" of activities of this past year to
> share via our new website. In this way, we can celebrate and promote the
> incredible array of work undertaken by our membership throughout the world.
Most of the highlights of my year came in putting aside my own work
for a night to be part of the audience for someone else's. First
among these was the memorial screening for Helen Hill, held at REDCAT
in Los Angeles on the Monday following my return from the AMIA
Conference. The presentation of Helen's "Rain Dance" at Archival
Screening Night in Rochester was the first I'd seen of her animation.
While I was eager to see more--to see all of it--I approached the
screening with some apprehension, feeling a little raw and wondering
how I'd hold up.
I was put at ease almost instantly. The screenings were preceded by
tributes and reminiscences from some of Helen's friends and colleagues
at CalArts, from Helen's mother Becky, and from her husband Paul.
Their son Francis Pop also said his piece, grabbing the mic from his
dad to interject "bababababababababa," setting off a call-and-response
with a friend in the audience who then joined him to dance around the
floor while Paul played some songs he and Helen had written together.
The presentations in sum were funny, loving, joyful and ebullient,
like a primer in how to approach the program to follow.
While the films themselves were wonderful*, I was conscious throughout
of watching the prints, which, had I not known better, I would have
guessed had been newly struck from the originals. But Helen's
originals were lost to flood damage from Hurricane Katrina; everything
shown here was laboriously restored from whatever work print and
well-worn release print material could be found. The prints were
their own quiet tribute to Helen from our colleagues--Russ Suniewick,
Dan Streible, Bill Brand and his NYU MIAP students, Hayden Guest,
among many others--who worked this year to ensure that her legacy as a
filmmaker would endure, and to make it so quickly and widely available
to the audiences who really needed to see it. In the context of
AMIA's first celebration of UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage,
their diligence and extraordinary generosity is a tribute also to our
profession at its best.
Brian Graney
Center for Home Movies &
Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory--UCLA Film & Television Archive
"Tunnel of Love" is still available online
at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3348217n