ShangOrama.com presents
Frederick Wiseman: Master Documenteur!!!
Two classic documentaries by one of dee mediums greatest filmmaker-ever!!!
Introduced & a Q&A session with social justice activist Josephine Grey will follow 1st film.
He is 77 years old now, and still making his 16mm films. He's better known to his friends as, "Mr. 16mm!!!" Go man go!!! Y'arrr Freddy!!! (Photos: Zipporah.com)
Frederick Wiseman is the most successful independent documentary filmmaker currently working in the United States. The first feature-length film that Wiseman worked on was Titicut Follies in 1967. This explosively controversial film launched the career of one of the grand-masters of American documentary. Not only is Wiseman a master of his art, but he has remained almost unbelievably prolific throughout his career. He has made 36 films in 38 years, many of them considered by documentary historians to be masterpieces of the form. Interestingly, his films have become longer and longer as his career progressed, with many of his films being more than 3 – some more than 4 – hours long. In spite of their length, all of his films are shown on PBS, which is one of his primary funders. While Wiseman certainly has a strong interest in social issues, he is not an exposé film maker; he does not build his films around exposing a specific injustice. The only exception is his first film, Titicut Follies. Here he did seek to effect change on the situation, but the experience left him disillusioned with the "naïve and pretentious view that there was some kind of one-to-one connection between a film and social change." Since then he has hoped to effect change at a more abstract level, by illustrating to his audience the everyday interactions between people and institutions.
Wiseman has a very unique style of filmmaking. His films seldom utilize any predictable or overt narrative structure. He does not interview his subjects, nor does he narrate or comment on what happens. This style of filmmaking is often referred to as the observational mode, which has its roots in direct cinema; indeed, Wiseman is often described as a direct cinema pioneer. A very distinctive aspect of Wiseman's style is the complete lack of expository (narration), interactive (interviews), or reflexive (revealing to the viewer some part of the filmmaking process) elements. Regarding the lack of reflexive elements, Wiseman has stated that he does not "feel any need to document [his] experience" and indeed feels that such elements in films are vain. In the process of producing a film, Wiseman will often acquire more than 100 hours of raw footage. Cutting this down to a feature length film that is engaging and interesting, without the use of any voiceover, title cards, or motion graphics, while still being "fair", is the reason that Wiseman is seen as a true master of documentary film.
"This great glop of material which represents the externally recorded memory of my experience of making the film is of necessity incomplete. The memories not preserved on film float somewhat in my mind as fragments available for recall, unavailable for inclusion but of great importance in the mining and shifting process known as editing. This editorial process ... is sometimes deductive, sometimes associational, sometimes non-logical and sometimes a failure... The crucial element for me is to try and think through my own relationship to the material by whatever combination of means is compatible. This involves a need to conduct a four-way conversation between myself, the sequence being worked on, my memory, and general values and experience." - Frederick Wiseman
- Date TBA -
7:00pm - Public Housing ( 1997, 200', 16mm (1.33), colour, stereo, USA )
Director/Producer/Editor: Frederick Wiseman; Cinematography: (dee great lenser) John Davey; Production Company: Zipporah Films; PBS (WNET Channel 13, New York).
Filming location: Chicago, Illinois. Awards: Won Grand Prix.- Marseille Festival of Documentary Film (1998).
PUBLIC HOUSING is a film about daily life at the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago. The film shows the work of the tenants council, street life, the role of police, job training programs, drug education, teenage mothers, dysfunctional families, elderly residents, nursery school and after school teenage programs and the activities of the city, state and federal governments in maintaining and changing public housing. The scenes illustrate some of the experiences of people living in conditions of extreme poverty. The difference between the hyped and emotionalized and what might actually be real. While the complete absence of the photographed acknowledging the photographer is a little drenched in the old school ways, this is great film making.
" In PUBLIC HOUSING, [Wiseman] has a superabundance of articulate, dramatic, stressed-out subjects. Wherever he points the camera, there is another confrontation between the lower-class, black inhabitants of the projects and the middle-class, mostly black professionals who are there to serve them, help them get on their feet, and, incidentally, police them. Again and again one is struck by the goodwill, resourcefulness, and genuine care shown by the social workers, cops, teachers, nuns, and sex education advisors for their often passive, resigned, rebellious, stoned, felonious charges. Again and again one is made to feel the distance between problems and solutions." – Philip Lopate, Film Comment
" ...Wiseman salts his film with example after example of pride and enterprise. For every long-lens shot of men on the corner snorting cocaine, there are shots of chess games, sewing circles and laundry hung lovingly on the line. For every bureaucratese-speaking clerk from CHA, there is a sympathetic plumber or a roach exterminator who can’t do enough for an appreciative tenant.… Frederick Wiseman… has an eye for subtle social distinctions." – John McCarron, The Chicago Tribune
" Issues that are all too familiar — drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, the frustrations caused by government red tape — take on new immediacy thanks to the extraordinary intimacy of Mr. Wiseman’s working methods. Through one revealing, well-chosen episode after another, he succeeds in turning sad generalities into powerfully affecting specifics." – Janet Maslin, The New York Times
11:00pm - State Legislature ( 2007, 217', 16mm (1.33), colour, stereo, USA ) - only dee 2nd screening-ever in dee Tdot (played at Hot Doc's last April).
Director/Producer/Editor: Frederick Wiseman; Cinematography: John Davey; Production Company: Zipporah Films; PBS (WNET Channel 13, New York). Filming location: Boise, Idaho.
STATE LEGISLATURE shows the day-to-day activities of the Idaho Legislature during an entire session. Lobbyists, lawmakers and their constituents are seen debating and discussing the concerns of the electorate, on issues that range from violence in schools, mad cow disease and video voyeurism to illegal immigration, secondhand smoke and the deregulation of telephone rates. The film is an example of the achievements, values, constraints and limitations of the democratic process.
State Legislature was a very insightful movie. I recommend this movie to anybody who wonders if the average citizen could do what a politician does. This documentary shows the good and the bad of a legislative body composed almost entirely (if not entirely) of citizens. The viewer is exposed to many committees and inner workings of Idaho's state legislature. At some point, you realize what someone says in the beginning: that these people who are legislating policy for the state are just average people with a concern for their community and state. These people are not "experts" or paid policy makers. While they have every resource at their fingertips, it seems at though they start out on whatever issue it is they are doing with about as much knowledge on that issue that you or I have right now. It is only through listening to and reading all the sides of an issue from constituents, experts, lobbyists, and everything else that these people start to get a feeling as to what, in their minds, is or would be best. They draw from history as well. But for those who enjoy watching the process and are curious about the "what ifs" of their state legislature, this is the movie for them. Sometimes scary, other times fascinating, and still at other times funny, this movie can really help one understand a little bit about what it is to be a citizen-politician.
"In my documentary films, I try to use film technology to observe and think about the diversity and complexity of life in the United States and, by implication, elsewhere. A legislature is the most important representative institution in a democratic society. The acts or omissions of a legislature affect all aspects of our lives and establish the rules, values and norms for key institutions such as the police, schools, armed forces, health care, the legal system, and other major institutions. ... This film will show the day-to-day aspects of the legislative process, the goal of which is the creation of the laws that govern the civic life depicted in my other films. Unlike a textbook description in a political science course of how a bill becomes law, a film about a legislature can convey in a unique way the actuality of the legislative process: that is, how decisions are made and power is exercised in a democratic society and the constraints and limitations on the application of that power." - Frederick Wiseman
"It was German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who said, “There are two things you don’t want to see being made: sausage and legislation.” Having examined the former in landmark 1976 docu “Meat,” cinema verite dean Frederick Wiseman now explores the latter in “State Legislature.” Proving the statesman wrong, the pic reps a dependably pro addition to the helmer’s canon, and will follow the fest, public TV and ancillary path of his 33 previous examinations of social institutions and the average Americans working within them.'
'During the 2004 session of the Idaho legislature, Wiseman and longtime lenser John Davey observed the minutiae of lawmaking in Boise’s state capitol. Chief concerns for this rural, beautiful Western state include environment and lifestyle: Some two dozen bills wrangled over courteously and, in great detail, focus on water policy, smoking in public places and relationship between church and state. While the pic does nothing to change the idea that politicians love to hear themselves talk, what emerges is the thoroughness with which the system treats even the most contentious of issues and eccentric of constituents. Crisp package showcases the intimate, nearly extinct art of 16mm lensing." - (Variety magazine)
See you here @MAJLIS: 163 Walnut Ave.
---MAJLIS is between Richmond & Adelaide; 1-bk W. Niagara [2-Little Lights W. Bathurst]---[[[View Map]]]
Remember, our Shanger & Daughter Cafe is just here for some of your shangin' comfort needs. OK? Shang! Shang! Shangers!!!
Frederick Wiseman, Chronicler of the Western World by Philippe Pilard (originally published in La Sept/Arte)
Fred Wiseman is probably one of today’s greatest living documentary filmmakers. For close to thirty years, thanks to the Public Broadcast Service (PBS), he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of thirty full length films devoted primarily to exploring American institutions. Over time these films have become a record of the western world, since now more than ever as we approach the century’s close, nothing North American is really foreign to us.
The institutions that Wiseman examined early in his career – a hospital, a high school, army basic training, a welfare center, a police precinct – have “problems” that the filmmaker uncovers. His approach reveals the profound acknowledged and unacknowledged conformity and inequality of American society. Wiseman’s films are also a reflection on democracy. What do his films portray, the “American dream” or the “air conditioned nightmare”? Both, but also a questioning of the world and of existence.
Occasionally, his films describe less circumscribed institutions
– the world of fashion, a public park, and a ski resort. In addition
to examining the social and ethical questions he is not afraid to confront
the “big” metaphysical questions particularly in the films about
handicapped children and dying patients. The filmmaker is trying to encompass
all of human experience in his films.
In the past, Wiseman had already made movies outside the borders of his own
country, in the Sinai, in Germany, and in Panama. In each of these films,
however, his subject was Americans abroad.
In 1993, in his film BALLET, he followed the American Ballet Theatre rehearsals in New York and performances in Europe. For a long time Wiseman had wanted to make a film in France and in 1995 he tackled that most French of institutions, The Comedie Francaise. Both in BALLET and LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE Wiseman raises questions about the conditions necessary for artistic creation: how to create those conditions which allow a director, an actor, or a dancer to achieve the goal of a perfect even sublime performance; how the specific dialect for the theatre works, the dialect which both places in opposition and transcends the solitude of individual creation and group collaboration.
“Documentaries, like theatre pieces, novels or poems are forms of fiction,” claims Wiseman. Over the years his films have become more a skillful mix of observation, testimony, reflection, an absence of prejudice, and courage, and humor. A complex body of work, as great works of fiction (novels, drama, music, and film) can be, with the same profundity, contradictions, and questions without answers. (zipporah.com)
Read a lovely Q&A session with Wiseman @PBS: "I think that film looks better than video or digital images. I also like editing film. There is something about handling film that pleases me."
His Documentary
Films (all as producer,
director, and editor)
1964 The Cool World - (as producer only; dir: Shirley Clarke)
1967 Titicut Follies
1968 High School
1969 Law and Order
1969 Hospital
1971 Basic Training
1972 Essene
1973 Juvenile Court
1974 Primate
1975 Welfare
1976 Meat
1977 Canal Zone
1978 Sinai Field Mission
1979 Manoeuvre
1980 Model
1982 Seraphita's Diary
1983 The Store
1985 Racetrack
1986 Blind
1986 Deaf
1986 Adjustment & Work
1986 Multi-Handicapped
1987 Missile
1989 Near Death
1989 Central Park
1991 Aspen
1993 Zoo
1994 High School II
1995 Ballet
1996 La Comedie Francaise ou L'amour joué
1997 Public Housing
1999 Belfast, Maine
2001 Domestic Violence
2002 La Dernière lettre (The Last Letter)
2002 Domestic Violence 2
2005 The Garden
2007 State Legislature
Further Frederick Wiseman filmography details @IMDB
BIO
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1 January 1930.
Educated at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, B.A. 1951; LL.B., Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1954.
Worked as law professor; turned to television documentary filmmaking, 1967.
Recipient: Emmy Awards, 1969 and 1970; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1980-81; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, 1982-87; International Documentary Association, Career Achievement Award, 1990; Peabody Award, Personal Award, 1991.
Address: Zipporah Films Inc., One Richdale Avenue, Unit #4, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, U.S.A.; Office Hours: Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm (EST)
Tel: (617) 576-3603; Fax: (617) 864-8006
Official Website: Zipporah.com - the only place you can buy his films & videos.
E-mail: info@zipporah.com
Browse our archives:
Event #10 - "TBA" (Sat, Oct 13, 2007) - come celebrate our first anniversary!!! Y'arrr!!!
Event #9 - "Ontario Provincial Election Night Open House" (Wed, Oct 10, 2007) - We are now cable-ready folks. Yeh!!! (((...Streaming server is next on our agenda...)))
jwcurry's - "Messagio Galore: a jwcurry quartet #4" (Sat, Oct 6, 2007)
Event #8 - "Kubrick's 2001 Trilogy" (Sat, Sept 15, 2007)
Event #7 - "Death House: dee Class of '93" (Mon, Sept 10, 2007)
Event #6 - "MC Shanger's 'Rushes Trilogy'" (Sat, Sept 29, 2007)
Event #5 - "Dario Argento's Goblin Trilogy" (Sat, Aug 25, 2007)
Event #4 - "a 20-hr Mario Bava mini-me Movie Marathon" (Fri&Sat, Aug 17&18, 2007)
Event #3 - "Remember Our Fallen Filmmakers Night!!!" (Sat, Nov 11, 2006)
Event #2 - "2 Banned Hell-o-ween Films" (Tues, Oct 31, 2006)
Event #1 - "12-hr 'Friday dee 13th' Movie Marathon" (Fri dee 13th of Oct, 2006)
Future events:
"Frederick Wiseman: Master Documenteur" (date TBA soon)
CONTACT & Mailing List additions: shanger@shangorama.com
Shang-O-Rama.com came on-line & was beamed-out from Toronto at precisely: 10:10am (10/11/06)
Can't wait for dee next Halloween - ACO & The Droogs gang rules that night!!! Viddy well Droogies...
© 2007 Gio. Shanger!!!