SINK OR SWIM
1990, United States, 48 minutes
Format: 16mm / In English
A landmark in autobiographical filmmaking, SINK OR SWIM is a wrenching portrait of a girl’s fraught relationship with her father. Unspooling in a series of 26 interlocking vignettes, the film chronicles punishments, neglect, and the tumultuous dissolution of her parents’ marriage, touching upon the father’s own childhood traumas and the girl’s emergence into adulthood. Friedrich brings together her own footage, archival film, and text into an evocative collage that underscores the shape-shifting relationship between past and present, family and self.
RULES OF THE ROAD
1993, United States, 31 minutes
Format: 16mm / In English
At once wry and piercing, RULES OF THE ROAD traces the arc of a love affair through the couples’ prized possession: a Cutlass Cruiser station wagon with fake wood paneling.