Frederick Wiseman Video | Clips from Films Directed and Interviews

Frederick Wiseman is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theatrical director. He came to documentary filmmaking after first being trained as a lawyer. He has won numerous film awards, as well as Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. In 2003, Wiseman was awarded the Dan David Prize for his outstanding films, which make us reckon with our emotions and the cost to society of marginalizing...  MORE

Frederick Wiseman is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theatrical director. He came to documentary filmmaking after first being trained as a lawyer. He has won numerous film awards, as well as Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. In 2003, Wiseman was awarded the Dan David Prize for his outstanding films, which make us reckon with our emotions and the cost to society of marginalizing those who cannot speak for themselves. In 2006, Wiseman received the George Polk Career Award, given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. The first feature-length film that Wiseman produced was The Cool World in 1963. He next produced and directed Titicut Follies. He has both produced and directed all of his films since. They chiefly are studies of social institutions: for example, hospital, high school, police department. All have been aired on PBS, one of his primary funders. The style of Wiseman's films is often referred to as the observational mode, which has its roots in direct cinema. However, Wiseman dislikes the term: What I try to do is edit the films so that they will have a dramatic structure, that is why I object to some extent to the term observational cinema or cinéma vérité, because observational cinema to me at least connotes just hanging around with one thing being as valuable as another and that is not true. At least that is not true for me and cinema verité is just a pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I'm concerned. Aftab, Weltz LESS