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And the Grit Goes To...

The Indie Grits Film Festival recognizes the best work by a female filmmaker with the Helen Hill Award.  I caught up with this year’s winner, Axel Forrester, who lives in Greenville.

Axel created Ice Traums for an installation called Traumbagger, a project she’s been developing for 20 years.  What’s it about?  In an email, she answers:  “Dreaming. Trauma. Sleep. Messages trying to reach us.”

At the festival a couple of weeks ago, Axel screened her work as part of a performance piece.  She found the festival to be “great fun” and says:  I enjoyed doing the installation, though it is always a bit like riding a roller coaster off the tracks.  You are never quite sure what will happen.  But the audience was great.  It worked well and I enjoyed seeing what other film makers were doing. 

If you missed it (as I did) here’s how one museum curator describes Axel’s films:  "intended to be projected on unconventional screening surfaces such as a frozen lake or a pool of milk, her work is like a dream, nonsensical but memorable."  

Trained as an artist, Axel approaches her films this way: I investigate an idea with images.  Some are made, some are found, some are borrowed.  Sometimes I have to create what I want with actors and sets, sometimes I just find what I'm looking for.  But overall I edit and edit until I have something I want to watch again and again.  Over time, that will change.  It is always evolving.

You can view images and learn more about Axel’s work at www.1otherworld.com.

The Helen Hill Memorial Award is given in honor of filmmaker Helen Hill, who grew up in Columbia.  She was working in New Orleans and helping rebuild the city when she was murdered in 2007.  

Hill had been working on a film about a New Orleans seamstress, Florestine Kinchen, that she didn’t get to finish.

An exhibit opening at McKissick Museum in early May will look at Hill’s work and include dresses made by Kinchen and a screening of Hill’s film that friends helped to complete.

The museum is  hosting a tea party and gallery talk on May 9, which is Hill’s birthday.  Learn more here.