The Florestine Collection

United States

2011

31 Min

Color

English

Currently 4.3/5 Stars.
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DIR Paul Gailiunas, Helen Hill

SCR Paul Gailiunas, Helen Hill

Experimental Animator Helen Hill found more than 100 handmade dresses in a trash pile on one Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. She set out to make a film about the dressmaker, an African-American seamstress who had recently passed away. The dresses and much of the film footage were later flood-damaged by Hurricane Katrina while Helen was still working on the film. Helen was murdered in a home invasion in New Orleans in 2007. Her husband Paul Gailiunas has completed the film, which includes Helen’s original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies. —IMDb

Director

Helen Hill

Helen Hill (May 9, 1970 – January 4, 2007) was an experimental animator, filmmaker, educator, artist, writer, and social activist who lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Hill began creating short animated super-8 films at age eleven. She earned her B.S. at Harvard University in 1992. While majoring in English, she also minored in Visual and Environmental Studies, where she made the 16mm animated short Rain Dance as well as two other animated films. After receiving an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Experimental Animation, Helen, along with her husband Paul Gailiunas, spent time in Canada, where she continued to create films and teach film animation at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) and at the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative (AFCOOP), before moving to New Orleans. Her short films, including Bohemian Town (2004), Madame Winger Makes a Film: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century… read more