Menu Content/Inhalt
Home
New Orleans: Remembering Helen Hill PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 08 February 2007
Click for HelenHill.org
I arrived in New Orleans on Friday, January 5, the day after filmmaker Helen Hill was murdered in front of her husband, Dr. Paul Guilianus, and their two-year-old son, Francis. One week earlier, drummer Dinerral Shavers of the Hot 8 Brass Band was murdered in front of his wife and two children.

These two murders -- along with about a dozen others in the first week of the New Year -- shocked New Orleans, leading to a March on City Hall where all the city's neighborhoods flowed into one huge crowd of grieving, pissed-off people.

I've written about D. Shavers elsewhere. I would like to take a moment to introduce you to Helen Hill. I've attended two memorial services for her, including a Tea on Super Sunday at the Zeitgeist Arts Center. At both services, Hill's films were shown.

Helen Hill was an animator, a film buff, and an accomplished teacher of the film arts. She could create three minutes of video as compelling as any you will see anywhere. She worked in stop-motion animation a great deal, and preferred real film over digital videography. Her films are colorful, humorous, and just plain fun.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any of Helen Hill's films online -- maybe because they are films and not files? But you can find numerous videos about Helen Hill -- and videos of the many memorial services held in her honor throughout the United States and Canada -- at the Helen Hill Memorial Site, http://www.helenhill.org.

A jazz funeral is being planned for Helen Hill on Saturday, February 24 -- the first Saturday after Mardi Gras -- at Helen & Paul's previous residence: 3438 Cleveland Ave., New Orleans, LA 70119.

I have received permission from New Orleans poet Lee Grue to reprint her memorial for Helen Hill. We filmed an interview with Lee Grue at last year's Tennessee Williams Festival (we'll be filming there again this year -- see our Tour Schedule for details). The loss of Helen Hill and D. Shavers has renewed our desire to film as many authors as possible, as fast as possible, at no charge. It is an ambitious project, but as these images of Helen Hill show, videos are often all we have left of lives snuffed out too soon.

STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews, Inc.

Helen Hill
by Lee Meitzen Grue

To lose this person is like losing a vertebrae.
Today's paper said, "The city falls to its bloodied knees."

Some people glow from the inside
with a small steady flame.
They go about what they do
with certainty.
They choose well. Marry for life.
Children learn from them.

They are not charismatics who draw us into flames.
Helen's fire was banked low to last.

Close to us she was only one in a list of dead
three days since New Year's Eve.
We are losing a whole generation.
Displaced young men without education, without jobs.
Their only commodity crack on somebody else's corner.

New Orleans is the new frontier.
Territory for people who have nowhere else to go.
There is promise here.
We are fighting the war of the Old West.
How was that won?
By homesteaders who persevered
and finally brought order at great cost.
Tags: New Orleans, LA,
Click to add your tags...,
Comments
Search RSS
Only registered users can write comments!

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
Last Updated ( Thursday, 28 February 2008 )
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]

Sponsors