Poll

What's your favorite by Frederick Wiseman?

haven't seen any
6 (33.3%)
don't like any
0 (0%)
Titicut Follies
2 (11.1%)
High School
1 (5.6%)
Law and Order
0 (0%)
Hospital
1 (5.6%)
Basic Training
0 (0%)
Essene
0 (0%)
Juvenile Court
0 (0%)
Primate
0 (0%)
Welfare
1 (5.6%)
Meat
0 (0%)
Canal Zone
0 (0%)
Sinai Field Mission
0 (0%)
Manoeuvre
0 (0%)
Model
0 (0%)
Seraphita's Diary
0 (0%)
The Store
0 (0%)
Missile
0 (0%)
Near Death
1 (5.6%)
Central Park
0 (0%)
Aspen
0 (0%)
Zoo
0 (0%)
High School II
0 (0%)
Ballet
1 (5.6%)
La Comédie-Française ou L'amour joué
0 (0%)
Public Housing
0 (0%)
Belfast, Maine
0 (0%)
Domestic Violence
0 (0%)
The Last Letter
0 (0%)
Domestic Violence 2
0 (0%)
The Garden
0 (0%)
State Legislature
1 (5.6%)
La danse
3 (16.7%)
Boxing Gym
0 (0%)
Crazy Horse
0 (0%)
At Berkeley
0 (0%)
The Last Letter/Zyklon Portrait/The Walnut Tree
0 (0%)
National Gallery
1 (5.6%)
In Jackson Heights
0 (0%)
Ex Libris: New York Public Library
0 (0%)
Monrovia, Indiana
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 18

Author Topic: Wiseman, Frederick  (Read 6810 times)

roujin

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2011, 11:46:24 PM »
High School II Frederick Wiseman, 1994

Whereas an overall theme and stuff could be worked out from the original High School, this thing just boggles the mind. It's 3 hours plus of nothing but teachers and students hashing it out. You go into the classrooms and you see a student talking to a teacher about her paper. You stay there for five minutes as he speaks to her about the things she could change. You drop in at a meeting between teachers as they discuss a conference that one of the teachers attended and her concerns about the academic competitiveness that she felt they were not preparing the students for. You change it up and witness a scene between students as one of them talks about how his life has changed now that he's become a father. You then go to a small classroom where two upperclassmen are helping two younger students settle a dispute. This school environment isn't about how to maintain order or teaching the students how to accept it. Instead the school espouses "habits of mind." The film is indeed a behemoth, but I liked how it concerned itself so explicitly on the mundaneness of its mock congress debates, safe sex workshops, etc. Indeed the film reminded me a lot of situations that I've personally gone through thanks to my job. Or, rather, it just captured the general ambience of the classroom. Which then made me think about my own position and my own experiences and made me reflect on how I could do better or how much I sucked. It was one of those. I cannot be a Nation Builder.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2020, 08:05:36 PM by 1SO »

Bondo

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2011, 11:48:17 PM »
1. State Legislature
2. La Danse
3. Near Death
High School 4/5
Law and Order 3/5
Titicut Follies 2/5
Hospital 2/5

All great in their own way.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2011, 04:33:32 PM by Bøndö »

jbissell

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #12 on: October 13, 2011, 05:41:29 PM »
I'm updating my vote to Welfare.

Verite

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #13 on: January 25, 2012, 06:31:12 AM »
Quote from: Slant Magazine
Slant: I read somewhere that you went to a lot of movies as a child and young adult. What are some of your earliest recollections of filmgoing?

FW: My earliest recollections of films are Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers. I think the Marx Brothers have been a source of inspiration always.

Slant: Duck Soup is one of the great films.

FW: Duck Soup and A Day at the Races. Can't beat them. As far as I'm concerned, they're both documentaries.

 :D

Oh, and Wiseman's next doc is about UC-Berkeley.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2012, 06:33:03 AM by Verite »
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Verite

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2012, 07:49:39 PM »
In regards to Crazy Horse, I overlooked the fact that the content would prevent PBS from airing it.  And Wiseman said that he never showed it to PBS because he assumed they'd say no to broadcasting it.  That was earlier in January and no mention of it on PBS' site yet so it looks like a no-go.  Summertime, for the past few Wiseman docs, is when they air.

Quote from: Wiseman
“I mean the whole thing about nudity I find really strange,” said Wiseman. “Everybody knows what men and women look like naked. It’s no surprise to anybody. You grow up seeing brothers and sisters. You might see your parents. Eventually you see your lovers. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.”

Also:

I wasn’t quite buying the whole cerebral approach, though. I watched the movie and I don’t care of you’re straight, gay, male or female, the movie is sexy. I found myself getting aroused on a number of occasions. What about the filmmaker? While he looked through his lens, did he get turned on at all?

“Oh, yeah,” said Wiseman.

 ;D
« Last Edit: May 01, 2012, 07:55:12 PM by Verite »
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mañana

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #15 on: May 02, 2012, 09:17:59 AM »
Such a prudish public broadcaster you have.
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

Verite

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #16 on: November 08, 2013, 04:08:46 PM »
A little more than 2 months away, Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley will premiere on PBS on January 13 on Independent Lens.

Quote from: Wiseman
My film about the University of California at Berkeley presents a strong and accomplished administration and faculty working hard to maintain — in the face of a severe financial crisis — the standards and integrity of a great public university, which is at the service of highly intelligent and diverse students. It was a privilege to film at Berkeley.

The film is consistent with my efforts to make documentaries about as many aspects of human behavior as I can. I think it is just as important for the filmmaker to show people of intelligence, character, tolerance, and goodwill hard at work as it is to make movies about the failures, insensitivities, and cruelties of others. At Berkeley is an illustration of this idea.

At Berkeley is the 38th film in my series about contemporary institutions. I spent twelve weeks at Berkeley and shot 250 hours of material. The crew consisted of myself and two others. No events are staged and there is no artificial lighting. The editing of the film took 14 months spread out over a two-and-a-half-year period. The film presented a particularly interesting editing problem since the diversity of material was much greater than in any of my previous films. A public university is a complex organism made up of many parts — students, faculty, administrators, staff, police, alumni, politicians, and the community in which it is located. In the editing I had to try and find a way to suggest these interrelationships, and their complexity, while simultaneously giving a sense of the entire institution.
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oneaprilday

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #17 on: November 08, 2013, 05:06:32 PM »
Calendar marked.

roujin

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #18 on: March 30, 2014, 07:21:36 PM »
At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman, 2013)

Over its four hours, Wiseman develops a complex dialectic between the radical protesting tradition of Berkeley, and the administrative diligence needed to keep the place running. We sit in on lectures stressing the student's need to dissent, to develop their critical faculties in order to question the knowledge given to them and also to develop a system of self-assessment in order to see if they've succeeded. All these actually manifest at some point throughout the film (mostly during the film's centerpiece protest segment), but the efforts of the students are then undercut (or questioned) when Wiseman cuts back to the the administration side. It's here where the true effectiveness of their protest is tested and they come up lacking. This could seem like Wiseman is taking the side of administration, but what I think Wiseman respects is the tradition of Berkeley and he genuinely respects the efforts of the students, but he fundamentally disagrees with the methods that they take. There's one point during a meeting where someone decries "cheerleading" as basically being useless, and praised the rational, logical gathering and presenting of evidence toward making your arguments, which is basically the approach Wiseman favors. When Wiseman cuts to the students, all we see them do is use a bunch of slogans, say a bunch of non-specific things, get basic facts wrong and get nothing accomplished. Depending on where you think Wiseman falls on the side of the argument, a shot of the emptied and darkened school library is either a hilarious punchline to a completely uncommitted and ineffectual protest or a subtle mourning of the student's inability to change the environment around them. I had both reactions.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2020, 08:05:50 PM by 1SO »

mañana

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Re: Wiseman, Frederick - Director's Best
« Reply #19 on: April 04, 2014, 12:05:25 PM »
I plan on identifying with the administrators. College students are the worst.
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