{"id":963,"date":"2013-07-01T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T19:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwolfepr.com\/dev\/?p=963"},"modified":"2024-09-01T16:55:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T16:55:18","slug":"su-friedrich-gut-renovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwolfepr.com\/dev\/su-friedrich-gut-renovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighborhood Watch: Su Friedrich Follows the Evolution (and Devolution) of Brooklyn for \u2018Gut Renovation\u2019 | DV Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Digital Video magazine \u2014 July 2013<\/em>
Neighborhood Watch: Su Friedrich Follows the Evolution (and Devolution) of Brooklyn for ‘Gut Renovation’<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 1980s, Brooklyn\u2019s Williamsburg was a working class neighborhood populated by small manufacturers, family-owned butchers and auto repair shops. The city\u2019s bohemians \u2014 artists, writers and filmmakers \u2014 began to filter into the area, establishing themselves in commercial loft spaces built out with DIY ingenuity and old-fashioned elbow grease. Williamsburg landlords turned a blind eye, and an artistic community blossomed and thrived. Then, in 2005, the neighborhood began to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While New York\u2019s trendy SoHo district took 30 years to make the transition from artists\u2019 haven to art gallery hotspot to outdoor shopping mall, Williamsburg \u2014 the victim of new zoning laws and tax subsidies \u2014 in just eight short years underwent a rapid transformation that pushed out generations of local, independent businesses and a community of artists spanning a quarter century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documentary feature Gut Renovation<\/em>, by independent filmmaker Su Friedrich and co-writer Cathy Quinlan, records the neighborhood\u2019s transformation from an artists\u2019 refuge to the sleek and moneyed hipster paradise it has become today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friedrich, who has been making experimental, personal documentaries since the late 1970s, and has received retrospectives at MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver, and the National Film Theater in London, has taught film and video production at Princeton since 1998. She spent five years documenting the changes in the area between New York\u2019s East River and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, showing the demolition of industrial buildings, watching old tenants leave, and keeping meticulous record of developments. One of the most moving sequences depicts the destruction of the building across from Friedrich\u2019s, including the ugly demise of what appears to be the world\u2019s most stubborn and spirited rock. (Read full story\u2026<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n