Frederick Wiseman

opens in US Nov 8

Thought At Berkeley was very good. I don’t like every Wiseman film I see--found Boxing Gym a bore, didn’t care for his horse-racing film from the early ‘70s. But I’d put At Berkeley just a notch below Welfare and Near Death.

There’s so much that, unless you were taking notes for a review, it’s hard to summon everything afterwards. (The film runs four hours.) There was a point in the first half where I thought, “This is well made, no surprise, but it’s not the ‘70s anymore, and all those sequences of incredible tension and confrontation that would flare up all of a sudden in Welfare and Hospital, you’re just not going to have that here.” And you don’t; Wiseman never manufactures drama, so mostly it’s an endless procession of meetings and seminars. I don't think Mario Savio's even mentioned for the first couple of hours, and when he finally is, it's at a talk given inside something called the Free Speech Movement Cafe. But it did start to involve me more and more as it went along; the last hour, given over to a student protest/building-takeover concerning fees and other grievances, is not handled like you might expect (especially the resolution), and that’s the hour I’m mulling and puzzling over right now, in the best way possible. I do think Wiseman is editorializing there, but I also know my own personality and biases come into how I viewed his handling of the protest. Maybe he isn’t--I don’t know. From a review I found: “Has Frederick Wiseman, the patient filmmaker whose long documentaries listened to the voices of ordinary people in public housing and on welfare, gone over to the dark side of authority? He clearly gives credence to the Cal executives, but, as ever with Wiseman, he leaves plenty of footage with information that gives you a chance to make up your own mind.” Yes--people will see that hour different ways.

Not a great deal of humour, but three things did made me laugh. A couple of shots of a guy on a John Deere mowing the campus lawns--you need the set-up for that one. There’s one seminar where a white girl identifies herself as “squarely middle-class,” says her mom’s a teacher whose income is stagnant while her own fees go up, and the only support she can get are unsubsidized loans; she starts to cry, and the black girl beside her gives her a supportive “now, now” pat on the shoulder. I don’t think there was any intentional irony there, but I did laugh. And I found it funny when Robert Reich showed up halfway through to lead a class, sharing anecdotes from his Clinton days. There was a jarring disconnect between the world of a venerated documentarian and the much-despised political class. I figured that would be enough right there to ruin the film for some people, and that amused me.

From the same Indiewire review: "Another question: Based on the proportion of women filmed by Wiseman in At Berkeley, you might think that the student body was 80% female. That's more a question of taste than reporting chops. Remember, Wiseman is the first person to say he’s not objective. He clearly likes attractive women -- not a sin, even at 83."

Well, at 51, I wasn't immune. Especially noticed the girl to the immediate right of the Thoreau/Emerson lecturer, and Sofia in Reich's class. Shame on Wiseman, shame on me.

...

feel as much shame as u need to just don't be so fucking creepy about it?

Meant as a mild, throwaway joke. No actual shame--just laughing at myself, and laughing at human nature.

at berkeley was excellent and sparked a good conversation later on with an activist friend who was in the library that day. she, unsurprisingly, had a different take on the administration than the one the film more or less lands on.

i haven't seen it yet, but i am extra curious about it for a number of reasons.

in fact, i was explaining that there are different types of documentaries to my students on tuesday and i showed them about 10 min of Juvenile Court and they were visibly repulsed when i turned the lights back on to get their reactions. they were just like OMG THAT WAS SO BORING, like they were going to die of boredom right there in the classroom.

haha

berkeley IS 4+ hours so you damn well better have a taste for wiseman's patient pacing and subtle subfrequency didacticism if you're gonna watch it. There are a bunch of "wiseman moments" where he juxtaposes the near surreal with the quotidian, like when you jump cut from watching a board room meeting to seeing three women dissecting a vulture. The movie plays like his Tempest; like he's looking back on a long creative life and surveying how modern youth is processing. There's a lot of holistic humanism too, both explicit (lengthy talk about Walden and how any disturbance in the pond sends out ripples but ultimately all is quiet unless you look beneath) and implicit (watch for the single lawn mower!). Workers sweeping stairways and laying water lines don't get to talk but Wiseman's point that "you are what you do" keeps everyone equally anonymous and equally honest (or dishonest). He did a brief skype interview from paris following my viewing and he commented that the only thing they didn't let him tape was the tenure committee meetings and that the administration had no oversight or editing capability on the piece.

Seems like the most overlooked Wiseman (and I've seen most of them) is ESSENE. If he only made that and PRIMATE, that would have been enough -- retire, you done good.

i don't like to think that his movies are ultimately about him and his career (rather than his subjects), but maybe at this point, they are? i didn't feel that way about high school 2, which was the most recent one i saw? i think?

oh, i dunno that's what it really was "about" exactly, it just resonated in that way with me.
prob my two faves are "zoo" and "missile" - the former is almost like a dream and the second is like wandering through an alternate military reality

At Berkeley premieres on Independent Lens tonight --some reviews here http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/berkeley-reviews

"National Gallery" is terrific.

i've been watching CANAL ZONE while i practice speed drills and it's surprisingly dull.

man, national gallery is GREAT

boffo ending too

"I’m of the opinion that Duck Soup is a documentary, but I’m not sure how widely shared that is. If you want to understand how government or large institutions work, see Duck Soup."

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/frederick-wisemans-top-4-documentaries

haw

well it's definitely not a comedy

why do you say that

Watched most of Adjustment & Work last night. Classic classic Wiseman, beautiful color too. It looked like I remember 1985-1986 looking too, which I find enjoyable. The guy learning how to walk around the town square and cross 4 streets consecutively while making turns made me feel genuinely nervous for him. Still got maybe 20 min left, but subjects are treated with utmost dignity afaict.

I saw him do a Q&A after National Gallery last month; he's in postproduction with a portrait of Jackson Heights, Queens.

I'd like to see National Gallery once more, at home and with time to pause over all the art talk. There's a lot of it; I drifted for a few minutes about an hour into the film. Gratifyingly, none of it sounded the least bit pretentious to me, or at least not until the woman who reads the poem near the very end. I liked At Berkeley just a bit more than this, but they're of a piece: the talk never stops, the funding may. My favourite images were the simplest, people in repose looking at art. The faces in the paintings were amazing; I sensed an implicit argument that the faces of the gallery goers were just as interesting. I found the dance piece at the end very odd. At first I thought it was being performed for a small gallery group, but it seems to have been created for the film. Very un-Wiseman-like, which was maybe why it was there. The last 30 seconds were perfect.

opening this fall

http://filmforum.org/film/in-jackson-heights-film

Awesome!

National Gallery is on PBS this week or next, check yr local listings

In progress:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3husr6/i_am_documentary_filmmaker_frederick_wiseman_amaa/

My next big project is - I'm working with a choreographer on a ballet based on my first film, Titicut Follies. Part of the ballet will be performed at the Toronto Film Festival on September 11. And the world premiere will be in October of 2016 in New York.

RollOnYouBears123 1 point 5 hours ago
As a graduate film student focused on documentary, I've been very much inspired by your body of work.
What is your advice to aspiring documentarians looking to make a career out of documentary filmmaking?

FrederickWiseman 3 points 4 hours ago
Marry rich.

hahaa, true

cannot believe there's going to be a choreographed titicut follies
that's beyond what my brain can comprehend

IJH is playing in DC this weekend as well as NYC

http://www.zipporah.com/films/44

Film Comment reported he's been shooting at the 42nd Street library.

Basic Training, not surprisingly, is far from the hyper-stylized set pieces and confrontation you find in most of even the greatest war films. (Not my favorite genre, I'll note.) You get the more mundane side of basic training instead--and when generals and such dress down recruits, they don't have veins bulging in their foreheads, it's done with mild condescension and sarcasm. Also not surprisingly, the black recruits get the worst of it. I'm sure it's a film that had more resonance when it appeared in '71, in the wake of Cambodia, Kent State, and Nixon's ongoing machinations--there was probably a disconnect, too, because of how mundanely and un-cartoonishly the military brass is presented. I liked it, but not as much as Hospital or Juvenile Court, which bracket it, and by the time of Welfare four years later (which I just re-watched), Wiseman's working at a whole other level.

In Jackson Heights is the 2015 film I most wish I'd seen in the theater (it never screened here).

I'm annoyed that I missed it in theaters also.

This is starting up next week - have planned my next few months around it:
http://www.cinefamily.org/films/the-complete-works-of-frederick-wiseman-pt-1-1967-1976/

honorary Oscar! the shame got to them.

Primate was this weekend's film at Cinefamily's Wisemen fest - I wish I had a picture of the audience faces when *that* scene came up.

Such a great scene. You keep thinking it can't go farther, and it keeps going farther. One of his best, most morally conflicting films.

Film Forum in NYC launches first half of their complete Fred retro

http://filmforum.org/series/the-complete-wiseman-part-i-early-wiseman-series

also, somehow, Titicut Follies[ is now a ballet (at Wiseman's instigation).

Just missed the chance to see that here:

http://www.jsballet.org/16-17-season

Ex Libris is very much of a piece with At Berkeley and National Gallery: the day-to-day flow of what happens there, mixed with endless meetings where board members try to figure out ways to secure funding and keep the institution operational. I've thought all of Wiseman's recent films with the exception of Boxing Gym were great, and this one is too. I will say, though, that he finds more interest in those meetings than I do. They have to be there, but after 20 years of staff meetings and workshops and P.D. days at my job, my meeting enthusiasm-meter is at nil. It's a language and a way of interacting I can't hear anymore.

Monrovia, Indiana

fuck bbcode - go see this

I liked it more than the last two NYC features. He really makes meetings about hydrants and benches count.

His rhythm was off by a few minutes this time, but distinguishing great from good Wiseman is silly. Watch it, ILX!

I thought the library and Jackson Heights were both, by his standards, a little shapeless. The ending really sticks here.

who needs a remake of The Loved One, right?

I've been waiting forever on Monrovia, Indiana; just googled the title + Toronto and discovered it played for three days in October. How I missed that, I have no idea. I feel terrible about this--may not get another chance short of a Wiseman series at the Lightbox or a ridiculously expensive DVD.

Do you have Kanopy access? There are about 40 Wiseman films on there right now; Monrovia not yet, but I'd guess that it's coming.

That actually worked, I'm signed up--thanks. Monvoria's not on there yet, but with so many Wiseman films, right up to the last few, I assume it will be soon.

Such a great film--my second favourite (seems like a weird word to use) after Welfare.

His new film is not as good as "Near Death", however, it is still worth checking out. Wiseman has great rhythm to his films. This latest one is no exception. The 4 hours zoom by really quickly.

Going through his films in order - after Ballet (1995) I had a hard time with La Comédie-Française (1996), I just couldn't relate to it.

Public Housing (1997) is about the Ida B. Wells housing project in Chicago (which was torn down in the 2000s). It is pretty great.

I am watching Belfast, Maine (1999) now and loving it. It is over 4 hours long though, so I'm taking my time