RENOWNED DOCUMENTARY AND EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER SU FRIEDRICH TO SCREEN AND DISCUSS FILM AT PURCHASE COLLEGE

Su Friedrich’s award-winning film, Sink or Swim, was praised by The New York Times for its “emotional resonances” and “rich, suggestive view of biography” when it first came out in 1990. Through a series of 26 short stories, Friedrich’s tour de force describes the childhood events that formed a girl's ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. Complementing the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events in daily life.

Friedrich, who continues to be a leading figure in documentary and experimental filmmaking, will screen and discuss the film in the Purchase College Music Building, Film and Choral Hall, on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 6:30 p.m. The free screening is hosted by the college’s School of Film and Media Studies, and is the first in a series that has received special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The AMPAS institutional grant will bring several successful independent filmmakers to Purchase College throughout the year to speak to students, faculty, and the public about their films and their experiences in the industry.

“Su Friedrich offers an exciting beginning to this series, because her films document first-person experience in a lyrical and artful manner. Her films are poignantly intimate and visually creative; they are as beautiful as they are compelling,” said Michelle Stewart, chair of Purchase College’s School of Film and Media Studies.

Friedrich is one of the rare documentarians whose very personal work makes significant interventions in both the artistic field and in those public debates where the personal meets the political—gender, family, marriage, and health—concerns which are visible through her career in films such as Hide and Seek (1996), The Odds of Recovery (2002), The Head of a Pin (2004), Seeing Red (2005), and From the Ground Up (2007).

Offering studies in new media, video art, and production training in filmmaking in a shared core curriculum, the School of Film and Media Studies at Purchase College, SUNY integrates production and critique of the media that shape contemporary life.

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspirations for Purchase were to combine on one campus conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences. Today, Purchase College, SUNY is a community of students, faculty, and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.