I Cannot Tell You How I Feel
Su Friedrich
Su Friedrich takes up her camera again in her ongoing quest to film the battleground of family life. Her sprightly though sometimes erratic 94-year-old mother Lore – already the main character in The Ties That Bind in 1984 – plays the lead once again, this time kicking and protesting against being moved out of her Chicago home to a facility for »independent living« in New York. Su Friedrich and her two siblings take on the supporting roles – cajoling and comforting their mother, until they eventually reach the end of their tether. Being confronted with the process of growing old is not something the 60-year-old director finds easy. Balancing out concern, a sense of responsibility and comic elements, she nevertheless succeeds in delivering a complex, humorous montage of events and a tender commentary on one of today’s biggest taboos.
Su Friedrich
Su Friedrich has played a pivotal role in shaping lesbian independent cinema in the United States with her films. She is always interested in current media debates, which she reflects on in her films. Inherent in many of her films is an auto-ethnographic perspective. Her works are shown in exhibitions and at festivals and have already been celebrated in 23 retrospectives, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the National Film Theatre in London and the First Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Friedrich’s films are part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute Chicago, the Royal Film Archive Belgium, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, and others.
Films by Su Friedrich (Selection)
Cinetracts5/10/20 2020 | Edited by: the Companion Film, version 22019 | Edited by: the Companion Film, version 1 2018 |I cannot tell you how I feel2016 | Queen Takes Pawn2013 | Gut Renovation 2012 | Practice Makes Perfect2012 | From the Ground Up 2008 | Seeing Red 2005 | The Head of a Pin 2004
