“I think you have to start at home,” says Su Friedrich about her avant-garde body of work in which the personal becomes political and universal. In her new documentary film Gut Renovation, Friedrich’s ‘at home’ attitude extends to her neighborhood of Williamsburg where she takes gentrification personally in a fierce, provocative, oppositional look at the effect of real estate development on a once traditional working-class community and artists’ turf.
A formally elegant filmmaker, known for her wit and visceral imagery, Friedrich is the recipient of numerous awards including Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the Grand prix at the Melbourne Film Festival and retrospectives worldwide. She is the writer, cinematographer, director and editor of all but one of her eighteen works. Among her most celebrated are Sink or Swim, The Ties That Bind and First Comes Love.
The New School Doc Studies 