Celebrate Helen Hill on May 8th

Saturday, May 8 @ 3:00 & 9:30 p.m.
HELEN HILL BIRTHDAY FUNDRAISER: Zeitgeist is pleased to present this Helen Hill Birthday Fundraiser, featuring a special short preview from the newly completed The Florestine Collection, Helen’s last film. This one-day only event will be Saturday, May 8th, at Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center. There will be two screenings, at 3:00 pm and 9:30 pm. The event is by donation. Funds raised go towards finishing The Florestine Collection, to create sound and master prints in 16mm film, Helen’s preferred screening format. Animator Helen Hill received a prestigious Media Arts Grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for The Florestine Collection in 2004. The film was inspired by a huge collection of handmade dresses that Helen found in a garbage pile. Helen was murdered during a home invasion in New Orleans in early January 2007, and her widower Paul Gailunias has been working to finish the film in accordance with Helen’s intentions. Sunday, May 9th (Mother’s Day) would have been Helen’s 40th Birthday.
Currently Helen’s films are archived in the Harvard Film Archive, and her film Scratch and Crow, made in 1995 and which will be screened at the Helen Hill Birthday Fundraiser, was named to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2009. Also featured at the Helen Hill Birthday Fundraiser will be other shorts by filmmakers inspired by Helen, the band The New Dopey Singers (3:00 pm), a Fresh Fashion Flash by HowlPop (3:00 pm) and author Cheryl Wagner will read a short excerpt about Helen and her animations from her book Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around (9:30 pm). For more information, call Courtney Egan at (205) 393-5588 or Rene Broussard at (504) 352-1150. By donation. All proceeds benefit completion of the film.

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This is a picture of a labyrinth that my friend Hilairie and I (and Dan, who came to say hello to me and got work!) did last year on New Year's Day. We invited folks to walk it, come to my trailer after and get a mimosa as well.
We had many, many friends come, gingerly step on the entrance and walk. Some did it slowly, some fast but all gave it a shot. I (silently) cheered them all on from my trailer doorway and added the moments walking myself to my cache.

A few days later, our friend Helen Hill was murdered in her home, in front of Poppy and Paul (son and husband) and I walked that labyrinth daily for a while, thinking of Helen and the brutality that was in contrast to her actual being.

I feel the need to spray chalk some more paths for my fellow citizens; I am hoping some of you want to lend a hand in different parts of town using this cool spray chalk to enter in and work through the muddle in our minds and lives.

If not, just give a beep or a bell ring when you go by and see me bent with a can in some weed-filled, glass strewn parking lot and know I am doing my best to even the odds of achieving peace in our tough little city.