COUPLES ON THE ROAD

Jim McBride (b.1941) is an American television and film director, actor, producer and scenarist. Although his audiovisual path crosses many genres – from documentaries about television series to comedies – his work from the 1970s closely resembles French cinéma-vérité. McBride is best known for his American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Bout de Soufflé’ (‘Breathless’, 1983).
 
Pictures from Life’s Other Side
1971, 45’, video, B&W, English spoken.
‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ can be regarded as a sequel – or better, as a footnote – to ‘My Girlfriend’s Wedding’, McBride’s mock-documentary from 1969. In the film McBride’s British girlfriend Clarissa decides to marry another man, in exchange for a green card, the official document needed in order to live and work in America. ‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ follows their story, and shows anew the big and small adventures of their hard daily life. Without fear or embarrassment McBride explains the link between his own life, social conditions and political conditions, thereby postulating on how to (continue to) live. As such, he films his girlfriend Clarissa, pregnant with her first child, emptying her bag, showing the objects and talking about her past. The couple also undertakes a journey across America, a hopeless attempt to flee from their barren circumstances.
In ‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ McBride examines Jean-Luc Godard’s claim that “film is the truth at 24 frames per second”. He hopes that the filming of his life will bring a sort of focus, a new balance, but in fact this very deed takes over his life. ‘Pictures from Life’s Other Side’ is not only a strong documentary of its time – a portrait of life in poverty in the America of the 1970s – but also a meditation on freedom and on life rediscovered.

 
Su Friedrich graduated from Oberlin College in 1975 and made her first film, Hot Water, in 1978. Her films regularly combine elements of narrative, documentary and experimental styles of film-making and often focus on the roles of women, family, and homosexuality in contemporary America. She is currently a Professor in the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University, where she has taught film and video production since 1998.

Rules of the Road
1993, 31’, 16mm, colour, English spoken.
Rules of the Road tells the story of a love affair and its demise through one of the objects shared by the couple: an old beige station wagon with fake wood paneling.
A typical American family car for an atypical American family, it provides the women at first with all the familiar comforts. But when their relationship ends, the car becomes the property of one and the bane of the other’s existence. Even long after their separation, this tangible reminder of their life together—and thousands of its imitators—continues to prowl the streets of the city, haunting the woman who no longer holds the keys either to the car or the other woman’s heart.
Through spoken text, popular music and images from the streets of New York, Rules of the Road takes a somewhat whimsical, somewhat caustic look at how our dreams of freedom, pleasure, security, and family are so often symbolized by the automobile.