Filmmakers! Apply for the 2026 Helen Hill Award!
The Orphan Film Symposium invites independent filmmakers to apply now for its 2026 Helen Hill Award. Conferred by the University of South Carolina Film and Media Studies Program and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and its Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, the award has an application process open to all.
The recipient/s of the award will be funded to participate in the 15th Orphan Film Symposium, April 8-11, 2026, in Columbus, at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts.
They will present selections from their work, projected for an eclectic audience of artists, scholars, archivists, curators, collectors, distributors, preservationists, and others. Symposium programmers collaborate with awardees to create an optimal presentation for the occasion.
Jurors will select filmmakers whose work affirms the artistic legacy, lived values, and everyday passions of the late artist, Helen Hill. Submitted works should celebrate and embody such things as creativity, self-expression, animation, small-gauge film, homemade movies and all things made by hand, collaboration, generosity, liberal spirituality, activism, love, play, community, and connection.
Past awardees are Jeremy Rourke, Kelly Gallagher, Martha Colburn, Jaap Pieters, Nazli Dinçel, Sasha Waters Freyer, Werner Nekes, Jo Dery, Jeanne Liotta, Jodie Mack, Danielle Ash, James Kinder, and Naomi Uman.
To apply, use this web form.
You will be prompted to provide:
• an artist statement (150 words) noting how your work harmonizes with this award;
• a bio and/or CV;
• links to works you want the jury to consider.
Submit by October 16, 2025. (Applicants will be informed of the jury’s decisions in December.)
Questions? Email aura Kissel <kissel @ mailbox.sc.edu> with “Helen Hill Award” in the subject line.
Questions about the symposium? Ask orphanfilm @ nyu.edu.
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Bonus material!
• Listen to animation historian and filmmaker John Canemaker introduce Helen Hill’s films at the 2008 symposium (4 min.)
• Learn about Helen and her work: HarvardFilmArchive.org/collections/Helen-Hill-collection.
• Watch 23 films at vimeo.com/HelenHill (written introduction by Paul Gailiunas).
• See Helen Hill’s Recipes for Disaster: A Handcrafted Film Cookbooklet (2001/2005).
• Read the essay “Media Artists, Local Activists, and Outsider Archivists: The Case of Helen Hill,” by Dan Streible, published in 2010. A shorter version is in the book Old and New Media after Katrina, edited by Diane Negra.
Image from Helen Hill’s Madam Winger Makes a Film (2001). https://vimeo.com/197137362
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