Odds of Recovery by Su Friedrich (USA, 2002, 65 minutes)
Faced with her sixth surgery and an ongoing hormone imbalance, the filmmaker turns the camera on a difficult patient—herself—and analyses the chances for a happier, healthier life. Odds of Recovery won the FEMMEDIA AWARD for Best Documentary at the Vienna Film Festival in 2003 , and numerous other awards.
“…the deft interplay of voices, words and images creates a steady accretion of metaphors and insights that are sharp and multilayered. While Friedrich effectively critiques Western medicine and demonstrates exhilarating filmmaking skills, its true achievement is as self-portraiture, boldly revealing a woman in all her difficult, naked complexity.”
— Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY
Seeing Red by Su Friedrich (USA, 2005, 27 minutes)
In Seeing Red, three elements run parallel, overlap, diverge, lock horns and in various other ways give voice to the notion that a color, a melody, or a person has multiple characteristics that cannot be grasped by, or understood within, a simple framework.
One element is purely visual.
One is very verbal and minimally visual.
One is purely musical.
So is red the color of a fire truck or a ruby, of rust or a rose, of blood or a brick?
How fixed is a melody if it can be twisted, stretched and shaken to the point where we no longer recognize its original form?
And when we “see red”, what color is that exactly? What aspect of passion are we feeling? Are we looking outward and seeing injustice and cupidity, or looking inward at our own limitations and failings?
