Programme 2

Sink or Swim
Su Friedrich, 1990, 48 min.

Rules of the Road
Su Friedrich, 1993, 31 min.

In the two films in this session, the author addresses her separation traumas using various formal strategies. 

Sink or Swim is a heartbreaking portrait of the tense relationship with her father during her childhood, her parents’ divorce and the impact of all this on her adult life. Narrated — as a distancing mechanism — by a child’s voice in the third person, the film adopts a structure with entries ordered alphabetically, referring both to her father’s profession as a linguist and a certain tradition of structural American cinema, particularly Zorns Lemma by Hollis Frampton (1970). Formally complex and emotionally intense, this film has become an important reference in autobiographical cinema. 

With a much lighter tone, Rules of the Road, Friedrich’s first colour film, tells the story of the relationship with her girlfriend through everyday objects shared by the couple, particularly a brown and beige station wagon. When the relationship breaks down, the car becomes the exclusive property of one of them, while the other, the narrator, obsessively films all the identical cars driving round the city while fearing that she is going to see hers at any time, with her ex at the wheel. Over the images of this now-symbolic vehicle (never her own), alternating with popular songs as if they were being played on the car radio, the author’s voice tells an ironic, sharp and original story about the difficulties of their relationship interwoven with a few ideas on love and family.

Gloria Vilches