Now 87, Frederick Wiseman is showing no signs of slowing down. His most recent documentary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, which gives an inside look at the esteemed institution, has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Staying true to the filmmaker’s distinctive style of organic, no-fuss lensing, with subtle opinions about his subject matter teased out through his editorial process, Wiseman assuredly conveys in this latest work, via 197 minutes of filmic snapshots, the rich intellectual life offered — and symbolized by — the Library and its offering of community events and talks with figures […]

Straight from its premiere at New York City’s Metrograph theater, the new 35mm print of Titicut Follies screened at Portland’s Northwest Film Center on April 21 with director Frederick Wiseman in attendance. The controversial film portrays the wretched conditions at The Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts circa 1967. In unflinching cinema verite-style, Ttticut Follies presents a stark portrayal of the hospital’s predominantly naked inmates as they are mishandled, force-fed, taunted by guards, and locked in empty cells. Titicut Follies was famously banned prior to its planned premiere at the 1967 New York Film Festival. Though Wiseman had gotten the requisite permissions, the state of […]

Having to reschedule interviews is nothing new, but when it’s because the filmmaker has to attend a rehearsal for a ballet adaptation of his 1967 debut film, I have to count that as a first. Titicut Follies — the collaboration between Frederick Wiseman, contemporary ballet choreographer James Sewell and musician/composer Lenny Pickett — was given a preview during the 40th Toronto International Festival ahead of the ballet’s October 2016 premiere at the Skirball Center at NYU. However, the topic of our conversation was the North American premiere of In Jackson Heights at TIFF, with Wiseman arriving shortly after giving an introduction at […]

It’s easy to take Frederick Wiseman for granted when he churns out nonfiction masterpieces at such a hair raising clip, but his latest, In Jackson Heights, is not to be missed. At once a paean and an elegy to the Queens neighborhood, Jackson Heights tracks the gentrification of the historically multicultural area, and the grassroots resistance among its immigrant and queer communities. It opens at New York’s Film Forum on November 4.

In its first half, the Competition of the 72nd Venice Film Festival has been a let-down, failing to present a single truly great title. The Orizzonti and Out of Competition selections have generally proved a safer bet, and of course the excellent Venice Classics program, which so far included screenings of restored masterpieces by the likes of Fellini, Melville and Hou Hsiao-hsien, has been a reliable and most welcome morale boost whenever necessary. Following Birdman and Gravity in the last two years, the festival extended its string of star-studded, big-spectacle openers with Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a fictionalization of an infamous 1996 commercial […]

The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman has turned to Kickstarter to complete his latest sweeping portrait, this time of the titular Queens neighborhood, In Jackson Heights. Wiseman is currently whittling down 120 hours worth of rushes to complete the finished product, which is set for a fall festival debut and a 2016 PBS broadcast. Check out a teaser of the film above, and read a bit about Wiseman’s editing process below. My job as editor is to make the film as best I can from the rushes. What I think about the subject matter is what you see in the final film. At least […]

From April 23-May 3, Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival spread its wings across the theaters of Toronto. Against that backdrop, the 16th Annual Hot Docs Forum and Conference Market featured another opportunity to glimpse the inner workings of documentary film funding and pitching. With 19 scheduled pitches (and one project picked out of a Mountie’s hat), I was once again given the chance to take the pulse of the documentary marketplace. Below are several thoughts culled from the front row at those pitch proceedings. 1. Get Your Trailer in Order So you’ve been chosen to be one […]

Last year I skirted around the issue of a Top 10 list by highlighting my 10 favorite scenes of the year, my logic hovering somewhere above “What is an effective film, if not the sum of its parts?” This year, I’m not so sure that axiom stands. Whether or not you regard it as the masterpiece it may or may not be, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has unimpeachably proved to be *the* film of 2014. I was fortunate it enough to see it in its best possible setting: front row at the Paramount Theater at SXSW, where a sizable chunk of the audience was hometown cast and crew. […]

Wiseman’s At Berkeley was a favorite of mine last year, and I’m just as eager for his follow-up, a three hour rumination on London’s National Gallery. Here’s our first look at the documentary, en route to TIFF and likely NYFF after its Cannes premiere, which covers the visiting public, the curators, the staff and, of course, the art, with Wiseman’s characteristic brand of watchful analysis. It’s all faintly reminiscent of the Bruegel room conversation in Museum Hours, in the best possible way. Watch above.

The great American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, La Danse) arrived at this year’s Venice Film Festival along with his latest work, At Berkeley. A monumental, 244-minute exploration of the famous California university, it emerges as a rigorous, deeply insightful institutional study, and a hymn to the power of open communication, particularly in the context of modern-day America. Following the film’s world premiere on September 2nd, Wiseman, looking spry at 83, took to the stage to address the audience. Filmmaker Magazine was on hand to capture the highlights. On motivation “I made the movie because I have been making […]