Each biennial Orphan Film Symposium confers the Helen Hill Award to an exceptional independent filmmaker whose work befits the late artist’s legacy, a celebration of creativity, animation, collaboration, and things made by hand. This year that’s Kelly Gallagher.
On June 16, at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, Orphans 2022 hosts Kelly Gallagher at the symposium, where she will screen her work for an international audience of archivists, artists, scholars, and curators. Her films certainly resonate with those of the award’s namesake. And given this year’s symposium theme — Counter-Archives — she is an apt match to the occasion.
We asked someone who knows her work well, 2016 awardee Sasha Waters Freyer, why this is so. She replied:
Kelly Gallagher is a true original! A 100% badass artist whose animated films are as beautiful and joyful as they are radical, and whose person is deeply committed to her students and to her activist vision for a better, kinder and more just world. Like Helen Hill, Kelly generously shares her knowledge and resources, including her “Everyone can animate!” project, which invites anyone and everyone to discover the joy of the process of animation, the unique possibilities for storytelling, and the expansion of its terrain to include under-represented voices.
A 2010 Helen Hill Awardee, animator Jodie Mack email in response to the news. “Kelly’s work fuses the joyfulness of DIY culture and handmade artisanship with the relentless anxieties of contemporary politics and revolutionary history. Her work as an animator, activist, and teacher all interrelate to provide a symbiotic flow throughout her practice. She is a valuable asset to the global animation community at large.”
Among the films Kelly will introduce at Orphans 2022 are some whose titles alone reveal the spirit of her work, including More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters: The Revolutionary Life of Lucy Parsons (2016) and A Herstory of Women Filmmakers (2009). The same energies can be found in her writings, such as “The Intrinsic Radical Nature of Handcrafted Animation.”
We thank Kodak for sweetening the award with $1,000 in film or lab services of the filmmaker’s choice. (And indeed Kelly shoots film.)
A sampling of the vibrant colors and vibrating animations on her Purple Riot Studio website give a hint of what awaits us at the June 16 screening. Or try her sizzle reel.
As Professor Gallagher, Kelly teaches courses in film history, the essay film, and animation at Syracuse University’s Department of Film and Media Arts. (Note: Today she shared the news: she got tenure!)
Learn more about the newest Helen Hill Award recipient on her About page and in her faculty bio and artist statement.
Established in 2008 by NYU Cinema Studies and the University of South Carolina Film and Media Studies Program, the award’s previous recipients have been Naomi Uman and first-time filmmaker Jimmy Kinder (2008), Jodie Mack and Danielle Ash (2010), Jeanne Liotta and Jo Dery (2012), Werner Nekes (2014), Sasha Waters Freyer (2016), Nazlı Dinçel (2018), and in 2020, in partnership with Eye Filmmuseum, Martha Colburn and Jaap Pieters.
The Helen Hill Award Fund has allowed these dozen deserving awardees to attend the Orphan Film Symposium. Help bring independent media artists to screen their work at this biennial forum. All funds go only to support travel and accommodations for award recipients. Contributions to the Helen Hill Award Fund can be made at this NYU web page. (Thank you!)
For more about Helen and her work, see vimeo.com/helenhill and her bio at wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hill.
The Helen Hill Collection is cared for by Harvard Film Archive, with rich context available at harvardfilmarchive.org/collections/helen-hill-collection.
An independent site by Paul Gailiunas hosts many of Helen’s films. vimeo.com/helenhill.
The 2022 Orphan Film Symposium is a co-presentation of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Cinema Studies and Concordia University. Register to attend. More than 60 speakers from a dozen nations will present rare and rediscovered orphan films throughout three days and four nights of screenings and talks. Registration is open to all.
Read the program and schedule here.