Su Friedrich's website: www.sufriedrich.com
A semi-narrative adventure in which one woman confronts several others, as they each perform typical feminine hygiene rituals on a crowded city street.
"Building on proverbs, metaphor, and the principle of a radical feminist imagination, Friedrich creates a world in which women's private rituals become public spectacles. Filmed in the streets of New York's Lower East Side, COOL HANDS, WARM HEART works through questions of danger, attraction, violence, and, ultimately, the transformative power of bonding between women. This work is an unusually original vision, re-imaging public space as a sort of Cool World inhabited by women of daring." - B. Ruby Rich
Award: Special Merit Award, Athens Int'l Film Festival, 1980.
Exhibition: Women's Film Festival, NY, 1981; Women's Film Festival, Munich, 1982.
1979, 16mm, b&w/si, 17m, $50
VHS Sale: $150
I combined simple, repetitive images with varying amounts of clear and black leader in order to notate as precisely as possible the essential rhythms and emotions of midtown Manhattan, while simultaneously undermining them. SCAR TISSUE concerns the chaste being chased and the captor being captive.
"... powerful and economic. Setting out to film street activity, Friedrich ends up with basically two images - women's legs skittering in high heels, and men's midsections, hands folded self-righteously across stuffed shirts or planted belligerently in pockets. Juxtaposed, the two appear as if from totally different species; the film left me with a yen to see one of those heels planted splat in the middle of one of those bellies." - Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
Exhibition: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987; Rotterdam Film Festival, 1988.
1979, 16mm, b&w/si, 7m (18fps), $20
Constructed from fourteen dreams taken from my journals. The text is scratched directly onto the film, so that you hear your own voice as you read. The "framed" images accompanying the words are of women, water, animals and saints, which were chosen for their indirect but potent correspondence to the text.
"... her films (particularly the celebrated GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM) signalled an important change that was occurring within the evolution of experimental cinema ... [I]t demonstrates her considerable technical talents and formal creativity." - Bruce Jenkins, Millennium Film Journal "The film portrays a dreamscape where society's conflicts step on stage in muted, mysterious forms." - Kathleen Hulser, In These Times
"What's so striking is her use of film to create a language which corresponds materially to the semi-conscious state between dreaming and waking." - Jo Comino, City Limits, London Exhibition: Osnabr�ck Media Arts Festival, 1983; Women's Film Festival, NY, 1983; Women's Film Festival, Montreal, 1985; Haifa Int'l Film Festival, Israel, 1985; Experimental Film Festival, Argentina, 1983.
1981, 16mm, b&w/si, 14m (18fps), $45
VHS Sale: $150
As in GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM, I began with a dream, but this time the words appear alone, on black, scratched in a more variegated style. They create images and rhythms independent of the filmed images, so that you "read to the beat." The filmed images of construction workers, prostitutes, firefighters and fish for sale are quite familiar, while the text describes a nightmare whose characters are all implicated in a terrible conflict. I couldn't decide who to "blame" for the dream, so the fat boy, the women, the babies and myself all became suspected and inspected through the making of the film.
"... it threatens like an unlit alley." - Barbara Kossey, LA Artweek
"Vernacular but tough-minded images are laced together with a sharply etched, poetic text which conveys high-powered metaphors and the pensive, paradoxical and gentler side of her thoughts and feelings." - Lindley Hanlon, Millennium Film Journal
1982, 16mm, b&w/si, 9m (18fps), $30
VHS Sale: Inquire
An experimental documentary about my mother's life in Nazi Germany and her eventual marriage to an American soldier. In the voiceover, she recounts her experiences, while the images portray her current life in Chicago, the assembly of a model German house, contemporary peace marches, archival footage of Germany, sensationalist newspaper headlines, her first years in America, and much more, woven together to create a dialogue between past and present, mother and daughter.
"The best of the New Directors/New Films Festival. ... The film is an original: a moving and courageous tribute from a child to her mother's beleaguered memory." - David Edelstein, The Village Voice
"... the ties that bind are not only the supposed benevolences of motherhood, but also the repressive dictates of the Fatherland .... In effect the film is like a court transcript of a mother brought to trial (albeit kindly) by her own daughter ... [I]t connects its effective literalism with a group of complex issues: the shifting attributes of memory, the repression of familial contempt and the economy of fascism." - Barbara Kruger, Artforum
Exhibition: New Directors/New Films, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 1985; Whitney Museum of American Art Retrospective, 1987; Women's Film Festivals in Montreal, Rome, and Holland, 1984-1986; Festival of NY Independent Films in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 1986.
1984, 16mm, b&w/so, 55m, $145
VHS Sale: $245
"... a real prize. Beautifully shot in black and white, it blends 'conventional' narrative technique with impressionistic camerawork, symbols, and voiceovers to create an intimate study of sexual expression and repression. [It begins with footage from] a stylist old potboiler about an isolated convent, whose tale of passions leashed and unleashed provides the leitmotif for a young lesbian who watches it and the lonely nun she pursues and seduces. As the two women's lives come closer to joining, voiceovers from the biography of a 16th century lesbian nun and the reminiscences of a woman's closeted romances at a Catholic school flesh out the theme. ... When the two women finally meet and make love, the woman's careful unwrapping of the nun's complicated prison of clothing is both foreplay and liberating metaphor. The film is as hypnotic as a dream." - Andrew Rasanen, Bay Windows
"... passionate and genuinely innovative ... a lyrical evocation of the mystery of memory and the development of sexual identity." - Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
"... as good humored as it is daring." - Scott Macdonald, Film Quarterly
Awards: Best Experimental Film, Athens Film Festival, 1989; Best Experimental Narrative Film, Atlanta Film and Video Festival, 1988.
Exhibition: Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989; film festivals in NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, SF, Toronto, Winnipeg, London, Creteil, Denmark.
1987, 16mm, b&w/so, 41m, $140
VHS Sale: $245
Through a series of twenty-six short stories, a teenage girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was deeply affected by his behavior. Working in counterpoint to the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events of daily life. Together, they create a formally complex and emotionally intense film.
"SINK OR SWIM is the kind of non-commercial but accessible film that throws a new and startling light on familiar subject matter." - Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"[A] personal chronicle about language, memory and Dad that strikes hard, and deep." - Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice
"Much of the richness of this autobiographical film, whose honest engagement with essential human dilemmas proves immensely moving, stems from its refusal to make simple choices or settle into unambiguous positions." - Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
Awards: Grand Prix, Melbourne Film Festival; Golden Gate Award, SF Int'l Film Festival; Best Experimental Film, USA Short Film and Video Festival.
1990, 16mm, b&w/so, 48m, $150
VHS Sale: $245
FIRST COMES LOVE is somewhat like an extended musical number, with perfectly choreographed scenes of four traditional wedding ceremonies accompanied by a schizophrenic, but amusing, medley of popular love songs. The celebratory atmosphere is interrupted midway through to remind us that there are still a few countries in the world that refuse to legitimate homosexual unions. The song and dance then proceeds until the happy couples depart, leaving behind a dwindling crowd and a few altar boys, who carefully sweep up the rice that covers the pavement like snow.
The film doesn't attempt to defend or discredit the institution of marriage. Instead, it reveals many subtle emotions surrounding the event and raises questions about how the double standard regarding marriage affects both gay and straight couples.
Exhibition: Festival of Festivals, Toronto, 1991; MIX NYC: NY Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival, 1991.
1991, 16mm, b&w/so, 22m, $75
VHS Sale: $195
RULES OF THE ROAD takes a searching look at how our dreams of freedom, pleasure, security and love are often symbolized by one of our favorite objects: the automobile.
"... the light, almost whimsical tone of the film should not blind us to the part of it that is irreducibly personal. Station wagons are everywhere; everybody's got a sad love story. But only one filmmaker, to my knowledge, has Su Friedrich's eye .... With RULES OF THE ROAD, she creates a film like a perfect short story." - Stuart Klawans, The Nation
"Filmed with her trademark energy and intensity ... it boasts an uncommon amount of visual and narrative imagination." - David Sterrit
"Friedrich makes elegant road kill of her emotional fixation ... it's a funeral parade for a love that gets comically, and ironically, stuck in traffic." - Susan Gerhard, The San Francisco Bay Guardian
Exhibition: Premiere, New Directors/New Films, Museum of Modern Art, NY; Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Toronto, Vancouver, NY, Philadelphia and SF film festivals.
1993, 16mm, color/so, 31m, $195
VHS Sale: $275
Hide and Seek is a daring exploration into wild, uncharted territory--lesbian adolescence in the 1960's. Lou is a 12 year old girl who daydreams in a tree house, tries not to watch a sex education film, wins a rock throwing contest, and is horrified to discover that her best friend is taking an interest in earrings and boys. Interwoven with Lou's story are the mostly hilarious, sometimes painful recollections of adult lesbians who try to figure out how they ever got from there to here. Completing the picture are clips from a wide array of old scientific and educational films which blend seamlessly with the beautiful black and white images of Lou's world. HIDE AND SEEK is for every woman who's been to a slumber party and every man who wonders what went on at one.
"Hide and Seek is rueful, funny, multifaceted and sharply intelligent." - Stuart Klawans, The Nation
"Hide and Seek is A Girl's Own Story for lesbians. Friedrich has woven a rich and provocative tapestry that assaults complacent assumptions about pubescent desire and lesbian identity, all the while raising important questions about the representation of racial and sexual fantasy life. [The film is] thoroughly engaging from beginning to end." - Yvonne Rainer
Produced with funding from ITVS, the NEA, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Awards: Outstanding Documentary Feature, OutFest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival '97; Best Narrative Film, Athens International Film and Video Festival; Special Jury Award, The New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival; Juror’s Choice, Charlotte Film Festival; Honorable Mention, Image Film and Video Festival
Exhibition: Sundance Film Festival; Berlin International Film Festival; Frameline Film Festival, Women In the Director's Chair; Inside Out Festival, Toronto; Umea Film Festival, Sweden; Melbourne Film Festival, Australia; Seoul Queer Film and Video Festival, Korea; MIX Festival, Brazil; ; Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, Japan; SXSW Film Festival, Texas; Dublin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Ireland
1996,16mm, b&w/so, 65m, $150
Faced with her sixth surgery and an ongoing hormone imbalance, the filmmaker turns the camera on a difficult patient—herself—and analyses the chances for a happier, healthier life.
"...the deft interplay of voices, words and images creates a steady accretion of metaphors and insights that are sharp and multilayered. While Friedrich effectively critiques Western medicine and demonstrates exhilarating filmmaking skills, its true achievement is as self-portraiture, boldly revealing a woman in all her difficult, naked complexity." - Holly Willis, LA Weekly
"...engrossing, good-humored, and confidently assembled...Recovery captures the frustration, tedium and petty annoyances of a revolving-door relationship with medical practitioners." - Dennis Harvey, Variety
"What could have been a health-care screed becomes a middle-aged meditation on mortality. 'You frighten yourself with that fear of not being totally in control,' says her therapist. 'What would happen if you gave that up?' One answer is Odds itself, which settles down into its own engagingly crafted, smoothly mellow rhythm." - Ed Halter, The Village Voice
Awards: Femmedia Award—Best Documentary, Identities 2003 Film Festival, Austria
Exhibition: Madcat Women’s Film Festival; National Women's Studies Association Conference; Wisconsin Film Festival; Women In the Director’s Chair, Chicago; London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; Athens Film Festival; The New Festival at BAM; American Society for Bioethics and Humanities Conference, Montreal
2002, 16mm, b&w/so, 65m, $150
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