News

March 28, 2023

Visual Arts Program at the Lewis Center for the Arts presents a screening of The Five Demands

The Visual Arts Program at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts will present a screening of The Five Demands, a new documentary film that revisits the untold story of an explosive student takeover of the City College of New York in April 1969. The screening, organized by Professor of Visual Arts Su Friedrich to mark the occasion of her retirement, begins at 7:30 p.m. in the James Stewart Film Theater, located on the first floor of 185 Nassau Street. Refreshments will be served at a reception preceding the screening at 7:00 p.m. Filmmakers Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss will engage in a post-show talkback, moderated by Friedrich, with two of the student participants in the historic strike, Rosalind McLymont and Charles Powell. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. The Film Theater is an accessible venue. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.

Historical black and white photo of a group of Black students walks together outside, some clapping hands and some raising fists triumphantly

A still from the documentary film The Five Demands, directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss. Photo courtesy of Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss / Jezebel Productions

The Five Demands tells the dramatic story of a student strike that changed the face of higher education forever. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, an elite public university in the heart of Harlem. Fueled by the revolutionary fervor sweeping the nation, the strike soon turned into an uprising and led to the extended occupation of the campus, the cancellation of classes, the arrest of students, and the resignation of the college president. Through archival footage and modern-day interviews, The Five Demands follows the students’ struggle against the institutional racism that, for over a century, had shut out people of color from City College and other public universities. The documentary uncovers the unknown story of this explosive student takeover and demonstrates how a handful of ordinary citizens can band together to take action and effect meaningful change.

The Five Demands recently premiered at the Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the screening in Princeton will serve as its New Jersey premiere.

Co-producers and directors Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss are an Emmy Award-winning, internationally acclaimed filmmaking team. Working together since 1984, they have produced 20 films including Before Stonewall, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Paris Was a Woman, The Man Who Drove with Mandela, Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story, and Bones of Contention, among others. Schiller is a two-time Fulbright recipient and recently produced The Land of Azaba, a feature documentary that closely observes the largest ecological restoration project in Europe. Weiss is professor of film at The City College of New York where she co-directs the M.F.A program.

“I am very happy that the last film event I’ve programmed during my time at Princeton is the screening of The Five Demands,” said Friedrich. “It’s an important film to be seen, especially on college campuses, and I hope that we have a great crowd next Monday night.”

su friedrich smiling with grey short wavy hair and wearing navy blazer

Photo by Alexander Tuma

Friedrich has produced and directed twenty-four films and videos, including Today (2022), I Cannot Tell You How I Feel (2016), Gut Renovation (2012), The Odds of Recovery (2002), Hide and Seek (1996), Sink or Swim (1990), Damned If You Don’t (1987), and The Ties That Bind (1984). Friedrich is the writer, director, cinematographer, and editor of all her films except Hide and Seek, which was shot by Jim Denault. Friedrich’s films have won many awards including Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival, Best Narrative Film at the Athens Film Festival, Outstanding Documentary Feature at Outfest, and the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. In 2016, her film Sink or Swim was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry of The Library of Congress. Her work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Stadtkino in Vienna, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema, the First Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and the Anthology Film Archives in NY. Friedrich has received the Alpert Award; fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim and the NEA; grants from ITVS and the DAAD, and multiple grants from NYSCA, the NYFA and the Jerome Foundation. Her films are distributed by Outcast Films and Icarus Films.

At the end of the semester, Friedrich will retire from the faculty of the Program in Visual Arts. She joined the faculty as a professor in 1998 and has taught courses in film and video production for undergraduate students, including a spring film seminar and advanced documentary filmmaking courses. During her time at Princeton, Friedrich organized many film events with visiting filmmakers, including such luminaries as Abbas Kiarostami, Julie Dash, William Greaves, Ernie Gehr, So Yong Kim, Yoruba Richen, Peggy Ahwesh, and Abderrahmane Sissako. In 2004, she co-organized, with Keith Sanborn and P. Adams Sitney, the “GLORIA” symposium which centered on the films of Hollis Frampton. Friedrich also organized the annual junior and senior thesis film festival, and in 2019 she created the senior thesis films archival page on the Lewis Center’s website, where visitors can stream all films made by students as their senior independent work since 2003. In 2008, she created Princeton’s film studies website, which featured listings of all film events on campus, and continued running it with the invaluable help of former film student Michael Jorgensen ’07 until 2018, when it became a project of the Princeton Humanities Council. Friedrich had invited the programmer of the Black Maria Film Festival, now the Thomas Edison Film Festival, to campus each spring to screen a program of award-winning festival films, and in 2018 she helped to establish a partnership between the Lewis Center and the film festival, with Princeton serving as the host of the festival and presenting the premiere screening each year.

Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Program in Visual Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free.

Press Contact

Steve Runk
Director of Communications
609-258-5262
srunk@princeton.edu