Summary: Avant garde filmmaker Su Friedrich drops by Filmwax Radio for a visit. After a brief discussion in the studio we hop into the car for an excursion through Williamsburg with Su acting as tour guide. Su's new film, GUT RENOVATION, gets the theatrical engagement treatment at Film Forum in Manhattan, beginning Wednesday March 6th. Check schedule for dates, times & appearances. Su 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). Her films have won many awards, including the Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival and Outstanding Documentary at Outfest. Friedrich has received fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations as well as numerous grants from the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, NYSCA and ITVS, and in 1995 she received the Cal Arts/Alpert Award. Her work is widely screened in the United States, Canada and Europe and has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, The Stadtkino in Vienna, the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver, the National Film Theater in London, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema, the New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the First Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the Cork Film Festival in Ireland, the Wellington Film Festival in New Zealand, The Bios Art Center in Athens, Greece, and the Anthology Film Archives in New York. Friedrich is the writer, cinematographer, director and editor of all her films, with the exception of Hide and Seek, which was co-written by Cathy Quinlan and shot by Jim Denault. Her work is screened and distributed widely throughout the US, Canada and Europe. She teaches film & video production at Princeton University. Her DVD collection is distributed by Outcast Films. Welcome to Williamsburg, New York’s new bohemia. Or is it? In the late 1980s artists moved into this working class neighborhood, populated by small manufacturers, Polish butchers, and auto repair shops, just across the East River. SoHo took 30 years to change from an artists’ bohemia to an art gallery hotspot, to an outdoor shopping mall; Williamsburg’s demise has been much faster, due in part to a 2005 zoning law change. With a winning combination of wit, anger, and political savvy, filmmaker Su Friedrich, and co-writer Cathy Quinlan, record how the neighborhood has changed from when they arrived in 1989 to the rich-hipster haven it has become. Friedrich casts a jaundiced eye on the sleek granite kitchen counters featured at the condo openings she attends; she paints graffiti on construction fences (“Artists Used To Live Here”) and comments wryly on her new neighbors (“What’s with all the fancy dogs?”). She gives up mapping a all new construction with building number 173. For anyone who has ever moved to an affordable neighborhood only to find that gentrification renders it unaffordable – this is the movie for you. Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum
