Susan Friedman

Producer/Director & Photographer

Susan is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer with 20 years of experience in the field of education. She is currently on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Many of her films have been aired on PBS. Ki Ho Alu: That’s Slack Key Guitar on Hawaiian slack-key guitar captured Best Documentary audience award in the Hawaiian International Film Festival in 2001.  This film also received a Special Jury Award at the National Educational Film Festival and a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Foundation, Pacific Islanders in Communication and Fleischacker Foundation. Her credits also include a Grammy Award-winning documentary on the making of an MC Hammer music video in 1990 and Irving Norman:To Whom It May Concern about the life and work of social surrealist painter Irving Norman in 1998.

In 1987, Friedman won the SECA award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for her films Suite for Jugglers and Piano, original music composed by George Winston, and for I Can’t Go, I’m Scared of the Traffic.

Her current film project What’s Up in the Universe?, is currently airing on Public Television. (see "where to see it page")   This film takes its viewers on a unique expedition of discovery by blending art, science, and metaphor as a technique for explaining the increasingly complex concepts of modern astronomy.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Friedman has also been a still photographer for many years and has had one-women shows both nationally and internationally, including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and San Francisco. Her book of documentary photographs for the Sierra Club, A Separate Place, was published in 1974. Her work is collected in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Oakland Museum, and the Bibliotheque National in Paris.

Friedman uses many alternative processes for her work including Platinum/Palladium, hand-coloring, toning, large-format photography and the encaustic process.

To view her photography, visit www.susanfriedmanphoto.com.