Right before the New Year, I got an email from Dan Streible, a cinema studies professor at New York University. “Yay,” it began. “The Librarian of Congress placed Helen’s film on the list.”

The list, in this case, was the Library of Congress’ 2009 list of films to be preserved, in its words, “for all time.” Only 25 films a year get this treatment via the National Film Preservation Act. 2009′s list included Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, the original Muppet Movie, and Al Pacino starrer “Dog Day Afternoon.” Oh… there were two student films included in the list, and one of them was “Scratch and Crow, produced in 1995 by Helen Hill during her graduate studies at Cal Arts. (Image below.) Read More »