Helen Hill (with Karen Redrobe)

About this episode

The episode features a discussion on the life and work of artist and filmmaker Helen Hill with guest Karen Redrobe.

The Fantasy/Animation podcast welcomes as its special guest for Episode 172 Professor Karen Redrobe, who is Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work traverses film theory, animation, and feminism, and she is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism (2003) and the new book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (2025), as well as editor of Animating Film Theory (2014) and Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures (2021, with Jeff Scheible). In this instalment, Karen introduces Chris and Alex to the life and career of the artist and filmmaker Helen Hill, who died in 2007 aged only 36, but whose ebullient imagination on display across her experimental shorts pushed at the boundaries of direct animation, stop-motion, and do-it-yourself methods of animated filmmaking. Listen as the trio discuss Hill's last short The Florestine Collection (2011) completed by her husband Paul Gailiunas, alongside earlier works Mouseholes (1999), and Madame Winger Makes A Film (2001), to reflect on mixed media film as a negotiation of trauma…

People in this episode

Hosts: Chris, Alex

Guest: Karen Redrobe

Topics covered

• Helen Hill
• animation
• film theory
• feminism
• experimental shorts
• mixed media film
• film-based activism

Keywords

• Vanishing Women
• Undead
• Animating Film Theory
• Deep Mediations

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Vanishing Women, Undead, Animating Film Theory, Deep Mediations

Books & works: Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism, Undead, the Art of War, Animating Film Theory, Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures, The Florestine Collection, Mouseholes, Madame Winger Makes A Film

Places: UK

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