Screenings: Ties That Bind, Sink or Swim
From the onset of her career in the late 1970’s, Su Friedrich has been a leading figure in avant-garde filmmaking and a pivotal force in the establishment of Queer Cinema.
Friedrich began filmmaking in 1978 and has produced and directed eighteen 16mm films and videos, including From the Ground Up (2007), Seeing Red (2005), The Head of a Pin (2004), The Odds of Recovery (2002), Hide and Seek (1996), Rules of the Road (1993), First Comes Love (1991), Sink or Swim (1990), Damned If You Don’t (1987), The Ties That Bind (1984), and Gently Down the Stream (1981). With the exception of Hide and Seek, Friedrich is the writer, director, cinematographer, sound recordist and editor of all her films.
Her work has radicalized film form and content by incorporating a feminist perspective and issues of lesbian identity and by creating a remarkable and innovative synthesis of experimental, narrative and documentary genres. Friedrich’s films are multi-lingual, moving fluidly between the personal and the political, from autobiographical films about family to the investigation of society’s notions of sexual identity. Her rich cinematic palette, which includes home movies, archival footage, interviews, and scripted narratives, has resulted in a thrilling body of work that continues to influence and inspire new generations of independent filmmakers.
Su Friedrich is the recipient of the Cal Arts Alpert Award in the Arts and has received fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, as well as numerous grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Independent Television Service, and the Jerome Foundation. Her films and videos are widely screened in the United States, Canada and Europe and have been the subject of retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Stadtkino in Vienna, the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver, the National Film Theater in London, and many others. Friedrich’s work is part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the National Library of Australia.
Friedrich teaches film and video production at Princeton University.
