One of the foremost contemporary filmmakers of the avant-garde, Su Friedrich is a pioneer of Queer Cinema and a ferocious provocateur. Arkadin is proud to present two of her films as well as a virtual Q&A with this utterly essential artist.

RULES OF THE ROAD (1993)
Rules of the Road tells the story of a love affair and its demise through one of the objects shared by the couple: an old beige station wagon with fake wood paneling. A typical American family car for an atypical American family, it provides the women at first with all the familiar comforts. But when their relationship ends, the car becomes the property of one and the bane of the other’s existence. Even long after their separation, this tangible reminder of their life together—and thousands of its imitators—continues to prowl the streets of the city, haunting the woman who no longer holds the keys either to the car or the other woman’s heart. Through spoken text, popular music, and images from the streets of New York, Rules of the Road takes a somewhat whimsical, somewhat caustic look at how our dreams of freedom, pleasure, security, and family are so often symbolized by the automobile. 31 min.

“… the light, almost whimsical tone of the film should not blind us to the part of it that is irreducibly personal. Station wagons are everywhere; everybody’s got a sad love story. But only one filmmaker, to my knowledge, has Su Friedrich’s eye…With Rules of the Road, she creates a film like a perfect short story.”
—Stuart Klawans, The Nation

GUT RENOVATION (2012)
A documentary of small changes evolves into an historical record of New York. The resulting film is an essayistic requiem for a neighborhood and an entire way of life; it also provides a case study of the rapid gentrification of our cities. In 1989, together with a group of female friends, Friedrich rented and renovated an old loft in Williamsburg, an unassuming working-class district of Brooklyn. In 2005 this former industrial zone was designated a residential area and the factories, manufacturers and artists’ lofts were priced out by property speculators lured by tax breaks. Friedrich spent five years documenting the changes in the area between East River and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. She shows the demolition of industrial buildings and the construction of trendy new apartments for wealthy clients, watching old tenants leave and new inhabitants arrive. As she keeps meticulous record of developments, the extent and speed of the upheaval becomes clear. When her lease isn’t renewed, her documentary images and trenchant commentary become the tools of her growing anger. 81 min.

“…the most salient and personal film about Brooklyn’s ever-changing face since Hal Ashby’s The Landlord… Gut Renovation is bound to polarize audiences. It’s a polemical howl in the night, a desperately angry and sidesplittingly funny look at one oh-so-mythologized neighborhood’s transformation…[It’s] a film essay that is of a piece with the work of heady French names like Godard and Varda.”
—Brandon Harris, Filmmaker Magazine

“Friedrich uses all manner of wry digs and ironic whimsy to make her point…the ‘damn-the-torpedoes’ directness of her spoken and superimposed commentary gives the film its unique bite and personality.”
—Ronnie Scheib, Variety

“…Ms. Friedrich is fighting mad. She is a provocateur.”
—Stephen Holden, The New York Times

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Su Friedrich has directed twenty-seven films and videos since 1978, which have been featured in thirty-one retrospectives at major museums and film festivals including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema and the National Film Theater in London, and have been widely screened and extensively written about. The films have also won numerous awards, including Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival, Outstanding Documentary Award at Outfest and Best Narrative Film Award at the Athens International Film Festival.