Through a series of twenty-six short stories, a girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work, and play.
As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was deeply affected by his behavior.
Working in counterpoint to the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events of daily life. Together, they create a formally complex and emotionally intense film.
In 2015, Sink or Swim was one of the 25 films chosen by the Library of Congress to be included in the National Film Registry.
“I regard it as one of the most intellectually lucid, aesthetically accessible, and emotionally moving avant-garde films produced in the past twenty-five years.”
—David Sterrit, The Chronicle Review
“The harrowing parts, which are so strong that I’ve heard them make a whole audience suck in its breath, take us straight to the meaning of the title….How strong Friedrich must be—how much like her father—to resist simply blurting it out (the stories). I’ve lived through none of these events, except in screenings, and yet I’m tempted to recount them all. But then, by doing so, I would betray Friedrich’s canniness, wit, and ceaseless intelligence, which are the qualities she seems to have rescued from childhood, as Athena bore away her father’s shield and thunderbolt…The astounding feat that Friedrich performs in Sink or Swim—defying death more thrillingly than any circus flier—is to persuade you that you’re getting the raw facts of her life, as you no doubt are, even as you’re being drawn into a territory of ghosts. That a haunting of sorts is in progress can’t be denied.”
—Stuart Klawans, Left In the Dark
Sink or Swim (1990)
Directed, written, shot and edited by Su Friedrich
Voiceover by Jessica Lynn
Funded by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation on the Arts, and Art Matters, Inc.
48 minutes, 16mm, b&w
Awards:
Grand Prize, Kino Award: Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia
Golden Gate Award: San Francisco International Film Festival
Special Jury Award: Atlanta Film Festival
Best Experimental Film, USA: Short Film and Video Festival, Texas
Juror’s Citation Award: Black Maria Film Festival, New Jersey
Gold Juror’s Choice Award: Charlotte Film Festival, North Carolina
Selected Screenings:
The New York Film Festival; The Whitney Biennial; Viennale Film Festival Austria; Festival of Festivals, Toronto; “The Color of Ritual, The Color of Thought: Women Avant-Garde Filmmakers in America, 1930-2000”, Whitney Museum of Art, NY; Impakt Festival, Utrecht; Festival of American Independents: 1920-1990, Torino, Italy; Association for Women in Psychiatry Conference; Flaherty/Vertov Film Seminar, Latvia; Karim Cinema, Cairo, Egypt; Collectif jeune cinéma, France; Belo Horizonte Film Festival, Brazil; 33rd Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinamericano, Havana, Cuba; International Documentary Film Festival “Punto de Vista”, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; Bilbao Film Festival, Spain; Virginia Film Festival, Charlottesville, VA; Ponrepo Theater, Prague; “Fidelity and Betrayal— Variations on the Remake”, SFMoMA, San Francisco; Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Japan; Osaka Women’s Film Festival, Japan; AFI DOCS Film Festival; Scratch Collection, Paris; Punto de Vista Film Festival, Pamplona, Spain; La Filmoteca de Galicia, Spain; La Filmoteca Valenciana, Spain; Filmoteca Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; Cineteca, Madrid, Spain