Su Friedrich

An insider's look at the first year of an activist group known as the Lesbian Avengers.

The film examines the ways that women directors have contributed to this genre and emphasizes the role that the media play in representation of sexuality and gender, underscoring the power that film has to shape our perceptions of one another. Visually, this documentary comes to life on screen through compelling and intimate original interviews, intercut with emotionally-charged archival footage, photographs, ephemera, inspired music, and film clips.

First Comes Love consists of perfectly choreographed scenes of four wedding ceremonies accompanied by a complex medley of popular love songs. All seems to be going as it should until the couples reach the altar, when the celebratory atmosphere is interrupted for a surprising public service announcement. Then song and dance continues until the happy couples depart, leaving behind a dwindling crowd and a few altar boys who carefully sweep up the rice that blankets the pavement like snow. The film doesn't attempt to defend--or discredit--the institution of marriage. Instead, it reveals the many subtle emotions surrounding the event, and raises questions about how the double standard regarding marriage affects gay and straight couples.

It begins with footage from a stylish 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.

A journey through an old house by way of a mirror, a child’s storybook, and some images from days gone by. Or a journey through some old images by way of a house. Or both.

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

A dream that was "left over" from Gently Down the Stream. Like many dreams, it transformed the familiar world into something more disturbing, contradictory and amoral.

Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.

From Go Fish to Paris is Burning to The Watermelon Woman, this festival favorite goes behind the scenes to reveal seven successful lesbian directors. These talented movie-makers enlighten and entertain as they explore their sexual identity, growing up gay, inspirations and techniques, Hollywood vs. Indie, and of course, love and sex, onscreen and off. The conversations are intimate, the topics unlimited, and the clips from their work enthralling! Featuring Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche, Jennie Livingston, Monika Treut, Maria Maggenti, Su Friedrich and Heather MacDonald.

Through a series of twenty six short stories, a 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.

Su Friedrich has taken up the camera again in her ongoing quest to film the battleground of family life. Her mother Lore--who played the lead in The Ties That Bind (1984), a film about her experiences growing up in Germany during the Second World War--plays the lead again, this time kicking and protesting against being moved at the age of 94 from her home in Chicago to an “independent living” facility in New York. Friedrich and her two siblings fill out the supporting roles, cajoling, comforting, and freaking out.

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM is constructed from fourteen dreams taken from eight years' worth of my journals. The text is scratched directly on to the film so that you hear your own voice as you read. The accompanying images of women, water, animals and saints were chosen for their indirect but potent correspondence to the text.

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.

After a twenty year period of multiple illnesses and injuries, the filmmaker turns the camera on herself as a way to analyze her chances for a happier, healthier life. In the process, she captures the frustration, tedium and petty annoyances of a revolving-door relationship with the medical establishment, while portraying the complicated web of emotions that accompany any medical problem. With humor and honesty, The Odds of Recovery uses the filmmaker's medical history as a means to address a perennial human problem: the desire to avoid conflict and deny the need for radical change.

The Ties That Bind is an experimental documentary about the filmmaker's mother, who was born and lived in southern Germany from 1920-1950. Through a mixture of personal anecdote and social history, she describes the rise of Nazism, the war years, and the Allied occupation, during which she met her future husband, an American soldier. The Ties That Bind breaks with the usual format of war documentaries, thus allowing a different portrait of the individual to emerge, while it reflects on the current political situation in America and the filmmaker's activities in relation to those issues.

Su Friedrich is a pioneering queer filmmaker who has been making ground-breaking personal films for decades. In Today, she again eschews conventional narrative, observing her world over a six-year period. It’s a time that includes a country vacation and a city cookout. Also the loss of loved ones and the spread of a pandemic—plus the brightness of flowers, both real and fake.

The film begins with a series of events on a crowded outdoor market street. Women on stages perform "private" rituals: shaving legs and armpits, fixing their hair, etc. A woman tries to disrupt their "work." She struggles to set herself apart from them, to resist the forces of habit, but gradually becomes more involved than she is willing to admit. Although she sets in motion a chain reaction of rebellion, she isn't able to keep the momentum going. She stops before carrying it to the logical conclusion, and ends up on the stage herself. Can we hold a knife without stabbing ourselves? Can we hold a knife without even thinking of doing that? And do we need knives?

"From A to Z" is a loving look back at a viral phenomenon that burst out during the Covid pandemic: The Jerusalema Dance Challenge. After Master KG--a South African musician and record producer--wrote a beat, and Nomcebo Zikode wrote the lyrics, and the Angolan dance troupe "Fenómenos do Semba" created a line dance, people all over the world started posting videos of their group dancing. Hundreds of them. On airport runways, in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, at the beach, in churches and monasteries, on game reserves, in town squares, fire stations, police stations….anywhere and everywhere from Austria to Zimbabwe. I was very moved when I discovered the videos during the pandemic, so I wanted to celebrate how so many people took up the challenge and danced with joy and hope.

Jerusalema: From Austria to Zimbabwe is a loving look back at a viral phenomenon that burst out during the Covid pandemic: The Jerusalema Dance Challenge. After Master KG–a South African musician and record producer–wrote a beat, and Nomcebo Zikode wrote the lyrics, and the Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba created a line dance (as seen above), people all over the world started posting videos of their group dancing. Hundreds of them. On airport runways, in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, at the beach, in churches and monasteries, on game reserves, in town squares, fire stations, police stations….anywhere and everywhere from Austria to Zimbabwe. I was very moved when I discovered the videos during the pandemic, so I wanted to celebrate how so many people took up the challenge and danced with joy and hope.

Su Friedrich's personal essay charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, the filmmaker was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving industries, working-class families, and artists. Filmed over many years, it is a scathing portrait of one neighborhood's demolition and transformation.