Page 295
be doing it, to stop disbelieving her, to trust her. I figured if the film was a failure in the long run I wouldn't show it. At some point I just stopped carrying on about it. It was strange to suddenly be thinking of my mother in this respectful way, to really be admiring her for what she did, for surviving. I had never thought of
her
.
MacDonald:
She's a remarkable person.
Friedrich:
Well, it took me a lot of time to figure that out. I think part of being a teenager is that you're so interested in forming your own identity and not being identified with your parents that you only see their bad side. One night when I was making this film, I was talking to Leslie [Thornton] about it, and said, "It just occurred to me that I learned some really good things from my parents." I was developing a better sense of myself; I was respecting myself more as a worker. I was proud that I could support myself, and I thought, "You know, this came from something; somebody taught me how to do this for myself, and it must have been them."
MacDonald:
You said at the screening tonight that you edited
The Ties That Bind
section by section, for seven hundred hours. The subtle interconnections between the imagery, the text, and the sound make it an easy film to see again and again.
Friedrich:
I was really scared about editing sound and picture. It was completely unknown territory for me. The temptation was to have this strong sound carry the image, but I was afraid of the image getting lost. I started with a forty-five-second bit (when she says she feels so horrible that she's a German) and inched my way along from there, going to a two-minute section, then to a five-minute section, and finally I could work on a ten-minute section comfortably.
I think part of my process as a filmmaker has been to start at a point where I think nothing is allowed, where you have to work with the barest minimum. I've needed to see what I can make from that minimum and then move in the other direction. I find I'm letting more and more things into my films now, and sometimes it worries me. I'm afraid I'm going to get to be too indulgent, too entertaining and engaging.
But I always want my films to be very sensuous. I want the rhythm and the images to be gratifying. I think it would be foolish, and false, for me to make a film simply in order to be "difficult," to respond to a certain part of the film world that expects that of a film. I enjoy going to films that are both sensual and entertaining, that engage me emotionally as well as intellectually. I'm so bored by most of the films that are made in response to current film theory, and I've never felt obliged to use that sort of language in my own work. I'm perfectly aware of all the pitfalls of the identification that happens when we watch narrative films, and I think that's an issue worthy of serious discussion. But I'd never deny the