Su Friedrich

Su Friedrich (b. 1954) has been described as an autobiographical filmmaker, an experimental filmmaker, a documentary filmmaker, an independent filmmaker, a feminist filmmaker, and a lesbian filmmaker—labels that she sprucely dodges, insisting time and again she is, quite simply, a filmmaker. Nevertheless, the influences of the experimental film culture and of the feminist and lesbian political ethos out of which she emerged resonate across her films to the present day. Su Friedrich: Interviews is the first volume dedicated exclusively to Friedrich and her work. The interviews collected here highlight the historical, theoretical, political, and economic dimensions through which Friedrich’s films gain their unique and defiantly ambiguous identity. The collection seeks to give a comprehensive view of Friedrich’s diverse body of work, the conditions in which her films were made, and how they have circulated and become understood within different contexts. The volume contains fifteen interviews—two previously unpublished—along with three autobiographical writings by Friedrich. Included are canonical early interviews, but a special focus is given to interviews that address her less-studied film production in the twenty-first century. Echoing across these various pieces is Friedrich’s charmingly sardonic and defiant personality, familiar from her films. Her occasional resistance to an interviewer’s line of questioning opens up other, unexpected lines of inquiry as it also provides insight into her distinct philosophy. The volume closes with a new interview conducted by the editors, which illuminates areas that remain latent or underdiscussed in other interviews, including Friedrich’s work as a film professor and projects that supplement Friedrich’s filmmaking, such as Edited By, an online historical resource dedicated to collecting information about and honoring the contributions of women film editors.

Auteurism expanded With acclaimed films like Sink or Swim and The Odds of Recovery, Su Friedrich’s body of work stands at the forefront of avant-garde and Queer cinema. Barbara Mennel examines the career of an experimental auteur whose merger of technical innovation and political critique connects with both cinephiles and activists. Friedrich’s integration of cinematic experimentation with lesbian advocacy serves as a beginning rather than an end point of analysis. With that in mind, Mennel provides an essential overview of the filmmaker’s oeuvre while highlighting the defining characteristics of her artistic and political signature. She also situates Friedrich within the cultural, political, and historical contexts that both shape the films and are shaped by them. Finally, Mennel expands our notion of auteurism to include directors who engage in collaborative and creative processes rooted in communities.

This volume offers introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde American women filmmakers.

The artist yann beauvais was perhaps the single most significant contributor to the history of experimental film in France in the last quarter of the 20th century. When he withdrew from the Paris scene in 2000, his legacy included books, museum exhibitions, the Light Cone distribution cooperative, and a rich body of his own film work This book surveys his prodigious creative activity in this period both through his reflections on his own films and articles he published on the work of others.

Captain Kirk fought Nazis. JFK's assassination is a videogame touchstone. And there's no history like "Drunk History."

Annotation. This sequel to A Critical Cinema offers a new collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is a feast for film fans and film historians. Scott MacDonald reveals the sophisticated thinking of these artists regarding film, politics, and contemporary gender issues. The interviews explore the careers of Robert Breer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning, Su Friedrich, and Godfrey Reggio. Yoko Ono discusses her cinematic collaboration with John Lennon, Michael Snow talks about his music and films, Anne Robertson describes her cinematic diaries, Jonas Mekas and Bruce Baillie recall the New York and California avant-garde film culture. The selection has a particularly strong group of women filmmakers, including Yvonne Rainer, Laura Mulvey, and Lizzie Borden. Other notable artists are Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Ross McElwee, Anne Severson, and Peter Watkins.

ROY GRUNDMANN, author of Andy Warhol's Blow Job --

Sitney analyzes in detail the work of eleven American avant-garde filmmakers as heirs to the aesthetics of exhilaration and innovative vision articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson and explored by John Cage, Charles Olson and Gertrude Stein. The films discussed span the sixty years since the Second World War. With three chapters each devoted to Stan Brakhage and Robert Beavers, two each to Hollis Frampton and Jonas Mekas, and single chapters on Marie Menken, Ian Hugo, Andrew Noren, Warren Sonbert, Su Friedrich, Ernie Gehr, and Abigail Child, Eyes Upside Down is the fruit of Sitney's lifelong study of visionary aspirations in the American avant-garde cinema.