with director Su Friedrich

Lesbian feminist, social activist, and Princeton University professor, experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich has directed eighteen films and videos over the past three decades. The Ties That Bind brings her radical avant-garde sensibility to the traditional documentary form. The soundtrack features an oral interview with Friedrich’s German mother (who is never seen in the film), in which she describes her life as a young woman during the Nazi regime. The images, however, present an impressionistic account of the early-1980s “nuclear freeze” movement. Friedrich’s startling juxtapositions and deft use of montage draw unsettling parallels between the Reagan administration and the Third Reich, while reminding audiences that social justice can never be achieved without the leadership of politically active women.