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The great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman speaks to MovieWeb about his lengthy career and his process as a massive retrospective of his career screens at Film at Lincoln Center. The series, "Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution," will be presented from January 31 through March 5, 2025. You can find showtimes, information, and tickets through the link below.

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/frederick-wiseman-an-american-institution/

For the first time, 33 of Wiseman’s films—from his second feature High School (1968) to State Legislature (2006)—have been newly restored in 4K from their original camera negatives and sound elements by Zipporah Films and overseen by Wiseman throughout a five-year restoration process, serving as one of the most essential restoration projects of recent years. This winter, Film at Lincoln Center is honored to present these and more of Wiseman’s films in a robust retrospective to America’s foremost documentary filmmaker. Once limited to 16mm film prints rarely screened in theaters,...

Over the course of his very long career, director Frederick Wiseman has always worked in nonfiction, in the realm of the real, yet his films may best be described as novelistic. Embedding himself in hospitals, schools, theater and dance groups, neighborhoods, and towns across the U.S. and occasionally Europe, he uncovers human drama, pathos, and psychological detail that escape the eye of the ordinary observer.

He began making films almost 60 years ago and has continued at the astonishing pace of just about one documentary a year ever since, his most recent film coming in 2023 with the magnum opus Menus Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (a four-hour-long movie the New York Times hailed as “absorbing start to finish.”).

Fred Wiseman films L-r ‘Aspen,’ ‘Deaf,’ ‘Central Park,’ ‘Basic Training,’ and ‘Ballet’

To recognize this unparalleled body of nonfiction cinema, Film at Lincoln Center is honoring the director with a retrospective titled “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution.

There are not many initial viewings I remember so vividly as I do watching Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies.” I was a junior in college taking a course on the history of documentary and when the professor chose to show us this film, I was immaturely prepared for the kind of slog the class experienced a few weeks before with Robert J. Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North.” What I got instead was both an intricately dynamic portrayal of an institution none hope to step inside and one of the most compassionate pleas for human understanding and empathy ever put to screen.

This is the power of Wiseman’s lens. For over 50 years, the Boston-based filmmaker has stationed himself and his camera within settings many of us take for granted or would prefer to avoid entirely. Places like hospitals, welfare offices, schools for the deaf and blind, meatpacking plants, and battered-women’s shelters.

February is a time for lovers. Romance, as well as the hope to find it are abound and what better place to seek it out than at your local repertory cinema. Sure, a dark theater full of strangers may seem like an odd space for finding a potential suitor, but who knows what can happen at the concession stand or under the marquee? One thing’s for sure: There’s nothing quite like the allure of the big screen.

This month’s offerings across New York and Los Angeles feature a whole host of fare designed to fill audience’s hearts, not just in the sense of discovering love, but also reaching to the soul. Starting January 31 and running through March 5, Film at Lincoln Center will be hosting a career retrospective titled “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution” that is sure to envelop newcomers to the documentarian’s hypnotic work, as well as longtime fans.

Last week, Film at Lincoln Center announced one of the most exciting retrospective series in years, “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” which features a massive selection of 33 films (most of which are very difficult to find), spanning the six decades of the iconic filmmaker’s prolific career — and they're all in 4K. They were newly restored from their original camera negatives and sound elements by Zipporah Films and overseen by Wiseman throughout a five-year restoration process, serving as one of the most essential restoration projects of recent years. Once limited to 16mm film prints rarely screened in theaters, these invaluable works can now be experienced in their fullest form at the Walter Reade Theater.

The fact that this series is happening at Flc is significant, considering their lengthy relationship with the filmmaker, whose films have been selected for the New York Film Festival 11 times since 1967. Wiseman is justifiably considered one of the greatest documentary filmmakers,...

“Hearts and Minds,” the 1974 anti-war film that caused a furor at the Academy Awards when it won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, has been named recipient of the 2025 Legacy Award at the Cinema Eye Honors.

The doc from director and producer Peter Davis and producer Bert Schneider was made in the final years of the Vietnam War, which it presented as an unwinnable and criminal enterprise by the United States.

“Peter Davis’ film debunked the lies surrounding the then-still ongoing Vietnam War,” Cinema Eye founding director Aj Schnack said in a Tuesday statement to TheWrap. “’Hearts and Minds’ stands as one of the greatest films about war in the history of film and reminds us that attacks on unarmed civilians are neither new nor acceptable. We are honored to celebrate this film and to present Peter Davis with our 2025 Legacy Award.”’

In response, Davis added, “The Legacy Award honoring my...

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for “Joker: Folie à Deux” now playing in theaters.

As costume designer Arianne Phillips was conceiving ideas for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” one character she got to spend considerable time on was Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel.

In the film, Gaga plays Lee, an inmate in Gotham City’s Arkham State Hospital. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) catches her eye. The two instantly connect. Her eyes light up, and so do his.

“Camp Lee” was where Phillips, director Todd Phillips and Lady Gaga — who Arianne Phillips refers to as “Stefani, Gaga’s birth name — workshopped how to present Lee. Speaking with Variety, Phillips says, “It was the chicken or the egg. Do you start at the beginning where we meet Lee in Arkham, or at the end, when we see her in her most Harley-realized state?”

However, the collaboration also tapped into something deeper, Gaga...

The cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest watched the banned documentary Titicut Follies to prepare for their roles as patients in a mental health institution. Titicut Follies (1967) depicts the horrific living conditions and cruelty inflicted on patient-inmates at a psychiatric prison-hospital in Massachusetts. The ban on Titicut Follies was lifted in 1991, allowing the documentary to be released to the public and witness the influence of the documentary's authenticity and realism on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Miloš Forman's Oscar-winning film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, owes a lot of its success to one banned documentary that the cast watched to prepare for their roles. Based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel of the same name, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) tells the story of Randle Patrick "R.P." McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a man convicted of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl. In a bid to avoid jail time,...

A well-told story ends when the credits roll, but not so documentaries. There, in most cases, the lives of the people depicted on-screen continue on, transformed by the fact of being filmed — and even more by whatever attention the project ignites in the culture at large. That’s why, in the hundreds of post-screening Q&As I’ve seen for docs over the years, the same questions come up virtually without fail: What’s happened since? How are the movie’s subjects doing now?

In “Subject,” co-directors Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall catch up with the people at the center of several major documentaries — from “Hoop Dreams” and “The Wolfpack” to “Capturing the Friedmans” and “The Staircase” — to see how their involvement in such projects changed their lives. That may be the hook that lures in audiences, though the film is far more than just a years-later epilogue to those high-profile docs.

Frederick Wiseman is busy. He’s always busy. Since he began directing films — his first, Titicut Follies, was in 1967 at the relatively late age of 38 — Wiseman’s been on the clock. He has made nearly a movie a year, 49 to date (the 50th, Menus Plaisirs — Les Troisgros, a portrait of a French Michelin three-star restaurant, will premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3) and, at 93 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down. “I like to work. Work is my salvation, it’s my religion.”

For half a century, Wiseman’s work has been the creation of a series of cinéma vérité documentaries whose almost laughably generic titles — High School, The Store, Welfare, Law and Order, City Hall — belie the films’ complex and idiosyncratic portraits of American institutions. They can be shocking: Titicut Follies, an exposé of the inhumane treatment of patients at a Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane,...

‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’ director Poitras will be the 2022 guest of honour.

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed director Laura Poitras will be guest of honour at the 2022 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which has also set two Focus programmes and the theme for its new media section DocLab.

Fresh from winning the Venice Golden Lion for her Nan Goldin documentary All The Beauty…, Poitras has curated a ‘Top 10’ programme for the festival, of films she believes are key to the human condition. Titles announced so far include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies...

U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20.

Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.

In the Retrospective section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today.

Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.

Poitras is currently on a packed festival tour with All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion in Venice and is now an awards season contender. After Venice, the title screened in Toronto and has dates set for New York and the BFI London Film Festival.

As guest of honor at IDFA, Poitras will be feted with a retrospective and has also been given carte blanche to curate 10 films that have influenced her work and shaped her view of the world.

Her Top 10 selections include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not A Film, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.

As part of the sidebar, Poitras will also conduct on-stage conversations with a number of the selected filmmakers.

Click here to read the full article.

Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).

Poitras will also curate...

This year’s Venice Film Festival competition has not been short on bloat. Todd Field, Noah Baumbach, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu all turned in sprawling works that stretched up to and beyond the 150-minute mark. Once upon a time this was the territory of Fredrick Wiseman, whose four previous films took their bows here—the shortest of which arrived at a relatively paltry 143 minutes. This year Wiseman returns with A Couple, a fiction film running a sprightly 62. How about that?

Some viewers, I wager, would trade every second for another five minutes in his City Hall or New York Public Library; but you’d be callous to deny him. A Couple is, indeed, about a couple. It’s drawn from Sophia Tolstoy’s diaries and letters, many written about her husband with whom she shared an infamously fraught—or, by today’s standards, borderline abusive—marriage. Behind that veneer is...

Frederick Wiseman, a voracious reader, doesn’t watch television. In fact, he’d never really gotten through a whole series until recently, when he watched HBO’s “The Wire.”

“I don’t know why, but it was interesting,” he tells Variety drily.

Every couple of years, the 92-year-old master documentarian behind such seminal films as “Titicut Follies” and “Juvenile Court” has churned out a sprawling documentary fixated on a microcosm of society or some sort of social issue, but when the pandemic paused those efforts for two and a half years, it’s Wiseman’s literary proclivities that drew him to Sofia Tolstoy’s writing for his new fiction film “Un Couple,” which premiered Friday in Venice’s Competition section.

Wiseman and sometimes collaborator, the French actor and writer Nathalie Boutefeu, were brainstorming small-scale projects that could be made in pandemic-proof conditions, when they landed on the diaries of Leo Tolstoy...

Frederick Wiseman has been directing acclaimed documentaries for almost 60 years. His camera has tracked vast institutional forces as far-reaching as the mental hospital in 1967’s seminal “Titicut Follies” to more recent and equally intricate portraits of Jackson Heights, small-town Indiana, and the New York Public Library. With that record, it’s no surprise that when the Venice International Film Festival announced its 2022 lineup with Wiseman’s new film “A Couple” in competition, many assumed that it was another non-fiction project.

“That’s good,” Wiseman said in a recent phone interview with IndieWire from his home in Paris. He was eager to catch people off-guard. “You know that old bromide of Emerson, ‘Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’? I don’t see why I need to be only categorized as a documentary filmmaker.”

Now he’s setting the record straight: “A Couple” is the rare Wiseman project that was entirely staged.

Documentarian Senain Kheshgi takes us through a few of her favorite documentaries.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

American Movie (1999)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary

The French Connection (1971) – Dennis Lehane’s trailer commentary, Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary

Grey Gardens (1975)

Salesman (1969)

Real Life (1979)

Hoop Dreams (1994)

Seven Up! (1964)

Don’t Look Back (1967)

Primary (1960)

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Reds (1981)

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) – Dennis Cozzalio’s 2020 best-of list

High School (1968)

Hospital (1970)

Titicut Follies (1967)

Harlan County, USA (1976)

Salaam Bombay! (1988)

Mississippi Masala (1991)

India Cabaret (1985)

The 400 Blows (1959) – Robert Weide’s trailer commentary

Bicycle Thieves (1949) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Muriel Awards column

Shoeshine (1946)

Citizen Kane (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Day For Night (1973) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary

Sherman’s March (1986)

Capturing The Friedmans (2003)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

The Mole Agent (2020)

The Act of Killing (2012)

Other Notable Items

Walter Hill

Walton Goggins

The Majority

Mark Borchardt

Mike Schank

The...

In “Mr. Bachmann and His Class,” one classroom becomes a portal to the world at large. In director Maria Speth’s sprawling, inspirational second documentary, the filmmaker presents about six months in the academic life of one of her personal friends, 64-year-old Dieter Bachmann, who teaches a primary school class for immigrant children in a mid-sized German town. On display are mild culture clashes, linguistic barriers, inquiries into religious differences, debates about values and ethics, and many, many musical performances. Among the dozen or so 12-to-14-year-old students he teaches, a mini-society has formed, with the promise of greater understanding for all in the future.

When we first meet the aforementioned Mr. Bachmann, he’s wearing an AC/DC shirt. The “School of Rock” vibes continue from there, as it’s quickly clear that he greatly values opportunities to encourage his students to perform music themselves. The long, immersive scenes...

Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, the four-and-a-half-hour documentary on Boston’s City Hall, finds him embraced by the city he calls home (when not editing in Paris) and given free rein to various departments. City Hall recently aired on PBS and is currently streaming on the organization’s website, marking a poetic full circle from Wiseman’s debut film, the Boston-set Titicut Follies, which spent more than two decades in censorship following a brief theatrical run.

When we talked to Wiseman, who has been stuck in Paris since editing City Hall due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he had just received his first dose of the vaccine. The conversation gave us a chance to discuss his latest film, his body of work finding new audiences via Kanopy, and what’s next for the 91-year-old.

The Film Stage: Congratulations on getting the vaccine shot.

Frederick Wiseman: I’m very relieved.

Do you...

Every Frederick Wiseman movie starts like a dare. Though the 90-year-old documentary legend has been chronicling social institutions ever since 1967’s “Titicut Follies,” many of his projects casually drift through three or four hours of dense, layered portraits following the people behind vast organizational forces. Ironically, this has actually made his work even more valuable with time, and “City Hall,” which clocks in at four hours and 32 minutes, is no exception. As attention spans dwindle and the complex mess of American governance grows murkier than ever, Wiseman’s immersive dive into Boston’s city services ignores the pressure to dumb things down and marvels at the complexity of a system designed to make the world run right.

Subtext: Take that, Trump! Just as Wiseman’s 2018 portrait “Ex Libris — The New York Public Library” served as a de facto repudiation of leaders who reject intellectual discernment, “City Hall” assails the corruption...

“Titicut Follies,” “High School,” “Ex Libris,” “In Jackson Heights,” and so many more. Documentary master Frederick Wiseman, at 90 years old, has turned out many of the greatest nonfiction films of all time — patiently unfolding, intimate, and deeply researched portraits of places and people, and what they can tell us about American life on a grander scale. His 43rd film, “City Hall” immerses audiences in the municipality of his hometown of Boston to illustrate a government taking care of its diverse citizens, all against the backdrop of an eroding democracy in the United States. Exclusive to IndieWire, watch the first trailer for the film below.

The four-and-a-half-hour “City Hall” first debuted out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in September, followed by a North American premiere in Toronto this month, and then landing at the New York Film Festival, long a favorite venue for Wiseman’s works. Here’s an...

Josh Braun, producer of some of the best documentaries in the world, joins Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that have influenced him throughout his life.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Man On Wire (2008)

The Cove (2009)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Encounters At The End of the World (2007)

Winnebago Man (2009)

Spellbound (2002)

Supersize Me (2004)

Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

Apollo 11 (2019)

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Finding Vivian Maier (2013)

Searching For Sugarman (2012)

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Frat House (1998)

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (2003)

The Exorcist (1973)

Go West (1940)

A Night In Casablanca (1946)

Hello Down There (1974)

What’s Up Doc? (1972)

El Topo (1970)

Pink Flamingos (1972)

Female Trouble (1974)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)

Gimme Shelter (1970)

Monterey Pop (1968)

Grey Gardens (1975)

Grey Gardens (2009)

Titicut Follies (1967)

To Have And Have Not (1944)

All About Eve...

The director of Sergio and many docs talks about docs and movies taken from true stories.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Sergio (2009)

Sergio (2020)

Reds (1981)

The Two Popes (2019)

Rules Don’t Apply (2016)

Bulworth (1998)

Dick Tracy (1990)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Innerspace (1987)

Ishtar (1987)

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Man On Wire (2008)

The Fog of War (2003)

American Dharma (2018)

Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru (2016)

The Killing Fields (1984)

The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)

Under Fire (1983)

Salvador (1986)

The Quiet American (2002)

The Quiet American (1958)

A Private War (2018)

The War Room (1993)

The Final Year (2017)

Independence Day (1996)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Bloodsport (1988)

Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite (1996)

When We Were Kings (1996)

Soul Power (2008)

High School (1968)

Hospital (1970)

Titicut Follies (1967)

The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007)

Before Night Falls (2000)

At Eternity’s Gate (2018)

American Factory (2019)

Dina (2017)

Honeyland (2019)

The Act of Killing (2012)

The English Patient (1996)

Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Purple Noon (1960)

Other Notable Items

Sergio Aragonés

Wagner Moura

Narcos TV...

Rick Alverson on Jeff Goldblum with Tye Sheridan in The Mountain: "He is using the boy as a refractive mechanism to validate himself, to show his worth."

In the final instalment of my in-depth conversation with Rick Alverson on The Mountain, he reveals that he is a fan of the films of Robert Bresson, Catherine Breillat, Michael Haneke, Bruno Dumont (Bernard Pruvost in Li'l Quinquin), and Claire Denis, and why Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker and John Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence are "huge" for him. He names Udo Kier as Frederick being the body of The Mountain, Jeff Goldblum's Dr. Fiennes the mind, and Denis Lavant the spirit, with Tye Sheridan's Andy as the son, and credits Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies as an influence for one of the numbers in the film.

Rick Alverson on The Mountain: "Essentially, the film is separated into mind, body and spirit.

There’s something about Tye Sheridan. Adopted early on by indie and/or iconoclastic filmmakers like Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Jeff Nichols (Mud) and David Gordon Green (Joe), he played fresh-faced innocents on the cusp of receiving wisdom or being irrevocably warped. Spielberg gave him a shot at leading-man heroics with Ready Player One; the X-Men movies gave him a chance at steady franchise superheroics by casting him as Baby Cyclops. His specialty seemed to be passivity. He didn’t look like your typical assembly-line CW hunk, though...

Cláudia Varejão’s camera embark’s on an enigmatic and occasionally baffling study of a hypnotic world

The ama are Japan’s fisherwomen, free divers who retrieve abalone, sea snails and other ocean products (they’re best known for their pearl fishing) out of the shallows without using oxygen tanks. Portuguese documentarian Cláudia Varejão immerses herself in the daily rhythms and rituals of one group, filming them at home and at work as they go about raising kids, singing karaoke and swimming to the bottom of the sea.

Made in the low-key, vérité style associated with directors such as Fred Wiseman, Varejao favours an austere approach that relies on long, unblinking takes, uses no music that doesn’t occur within the action itself and no subtitles that clarify who’s who. Indeed, there are no explanations at all, leaving the viewer to work out why, for instance, the women wear...

By Glenn Dunks

Depending on your point of few, Frederick Wiseman films exist in a realm of apoliticicm or are stealth political missiles. I believe it’s a little bit somewhere in between. It is easy of course to see the markings of a political filmmaker in his works if you know where to look, and can be done so in essentially all of his works from his debut with Titicut Follies in 1967 right up to his most recent works In Jackson Heights and Ex Libris: The New York Public Library.

And yet he’s obviously no Michael Moore or Alex Gibney, and the way his camera silent observes with little regard for constructed narrative means that it is easy for his films to feel as if any political ideology that rises to the form of text is purely accidental.

With a film such as Wiseman’s latest – his 42nd...

You may expect sparks to fly in a documentary about an Indiana town whose citizens voted 76 percent in favor of the liberal punching bag who now occupies the White House. But nothing as simplistic as Trump-bashing — though that would be so satisfying — would ever occur to Frederick Wiseman, a master chronicler of American institutions (a hospital, a zoo, a racetrack, public school, a boxing gym, a police department). In more than a half-century of filmmaking, Wiseman, now 88, has always put journalistic integrity at the forefront of his documentaries, from the...

Above: French poster for Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France, 1961). Design by Raymond Gid.There is an essential and vital film series opening today at Film Forum in New York: a survey of 1960s Cinema Verité productions which brings vividly to life a decade of instability and protest as well as a new era of introspection. While this survey of posters doesn’t give a complete look at the series—“more than 50 modern classics which not only changed the recording of social history, but revolutionized filmmaking itself”—since many of the films are not feature-length (some of the shows pair an hour long film with a 30 minute short) and thus were not theatrically released. But those that I’ve gathered do convey the urgency of the movement as well as its seat-of-the-pants guerrilla style of film marketing as much as film making.I’ve not included the...

Frederick Wiseman has made first-rate documentaries on his own terms for a half century, delving into the nuances of institutions and communities from the inside out. From his seminal 1967 portrait of a mental hospital in “Titicut Follies” to last year’s “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library,” the 88-year-old non-fiction legend continues to shoot and edit his sprawling portraits with a slow-burn, inquisitive style unparalleled in his field. You don’t watch Wiseman movies, which are often distinguished by epic running times, so much as you live in them.

Read More:‘Ex Libris — The New York Public Library’ Review: The Best Thing to Happen to Libraries Since the Dewey Decimal System

“Ex Libris” is no exception, but recent events turned this 197-minute deep-dive into the functions of the city’s literary institution brought a whole new context to the project, even to the filmmaker himself.

“Trump made it a political film because it represents,...

Imagine Frederick Wiseman and Wes Anderson having a Skype chat about film genres and designations, how they structure their features, and what it means to be a filmmaker. And now imagine that you’re allowed to watch that conversation. Have we got a treat for you.

Earlier this year, the pair had that exact chat (and more), and the result, a full 20-minute conversation, was only shown at select theaters on Art House Theater Day on September 24, 2017, following a fiftieth anniversary screening of Wiseman’s first film, “Titicut Follies.” The full discussion will be available next month as a bonus feature on the newly remastered Blu-ray release of the film.

Read More:‘Ex Libris – The New York Public Library’ Trailer: Frederick Wiseman’s Newest Opus Is a Love Letter to Another Beloved Institution

Check out our exclusive clip from Anderson and Wiseman’s chat below.

Wiseman’s current film “Ex...

"Plunge into the intrinsic range of unfamiliar expressions, inside this wild sanctuary that offers a sonorious glimpse into the reveries, melodies, and rhapsodies of a great donkey orchestra."   What is undoubtedly one of the strangest documentaries of 2017, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's portrait of empathy on the most maligned of beasts, the humble Donkey, plays out like a fly-on-the-tail Frederick Wiseman film. Do Donkey's Act? is kind of an inversion of Titicut Follies through the needles-eye of Au Hasard Balthazar, only ponderously plush with purple prose, narrated with picnic panache by none other than Willem Dafoe.    It takes about 10 minutes or so to get into the rhythm of the film, but once you hang-five on the vibe (bro), the unconventional presentation becomes...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, also known as the “Main Branch” of the New York Public Library, is located at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, next to Bryant Park. Almost 150 years ago that was the setting of the Murray Hill Reservoir, which supplied drinking water for most of the city through the end of the 19th century. It’s perhaps no coincide that the Nypl’s headquarters are located there, since they have taken on the duty of supplying the city with knowledge and culture, elements which are as essential to New Yorkers as water. The iconic building is at the center of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris, an enthralling documentary that chronicles the work the Nypl continues to do since its inception in 1911.

Wiseman’s enlightening, often quite moving film, explores the Nypl’s reach beyond 42nd Street, through its almost 90 branches, which provide courses, talks and, of course,...

Some artists lose their drive with age. Not Frederick Wiseman. If anything, the octogenarian documentarian has only grown more ambitious as he’s grown older. Half a century after Titicut Follies, his films now regularly stretch past the three-hour mark, in part because he’s increasingly selected hugely expansive…

Read more...

The RiderThe lineup for the 2017 Telluride Film Festival (September 1st - 4th) has been announced:

Arthur Miller: Writer (Rebecca Miller, U.S.)Battle of the Sexes (Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton, U.S.)Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, U.K.)Downsizing (Alexander Payne, U.S.)Eating Animals (Christopher Quinn, U.S.)Faces Places (Agnès Varda & Jr, France)A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, Chile/U.S./Germany/Spain)Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (Paul McGuigan, U.K.)First Reformed (Paul Schrader, U.S.)First They Killed My Father (Angelina Jolie, U.S./Cambodia)Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz, Israel)Hostages (Rezo Gigineishvili, Georgia/Russia/Poland)Hostiles (Scott Cooper, U.S.)Human Flow (Ai Weiwei, U.S./Germany)The Insult (Ziad Doueiri, France-Lebanon)Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, U.S.)Land of the Free (Camilla Magid, Denmark-Finland)Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, U.K./U.S)Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia/France/Belgium/Germany)Love,...

Now in its 44th year, Telluride Film Festival provides the launching pad for many of the fall’s biggest films and, as usual, we don’t know the line-up until right before it kicks off. Beginning this Friday, they’ve now unveiled the full slate, which features much of the expected players — new films from Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Alexander Payne, Joe Wright, and Todd Haynes — as well as the latest work from Paul Schrader, Andrew Haigh, Agnes Varda, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, and more.

Check out the line-up below.

Arthur Miller: Writer (d. Rebecca Miller, U.S., 2017)

Battle Of The Sexes (d. Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, U.S., 2017)

Darkest Hour (d. Joe Wright, U.K., 2017)

Downsizing (d. Alexander Payne, U.S., 2017)

Eating Animals (d. Christopher Quinn, U.S., 2017)

Faces Places (d. Agnes Varda, Jr, France, 2017)

A Fantastic Woman (d. Sebastián Lelio, Chile-u.S.-Germany-Spain, 2017)

Film Stars Don’T Die In Liverpool (d.

The Telluride Film Festival has announced its 2017 lineup. As usual, the exclusive Colorado gathering features a range of buzzy fall season movies, including many films also premiering in Venice and Toronto as well as others resurfacing from earlier in the year, just in time for awards season. Filmmakers in this year’s program range from Alexander Payne to Angelina Jolie. The festival will also honor cinematographer Ed Lachman, actor Christian Bale, and screen a new cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 Harlem musical “The Cotton Club.”

One of the bigger films to make the cut in this year’s lineup should take no one by surprise: “Downsizing” (12/22, Paramount), Payne’s long-gestating near-future workplace satire starring Matt Damon, will screen at the festival where Payne has been a regular for years (both as a filmmaker and audience member). The movie opened the Venice Film Festival earlier this week, and was followed...

For fans of arthouse theaters, the power of the big screen experience, and indie film in general, the now-annual Art House Theater Day offers up the chance to combine all those obsessions into one single event. Bolstered by the success of last year’s inaugural event, The Art House Convergence — an international organization of independent, community-based, mission-driven movie theaters — has now announced their plans for their second annual Art House Theater Day.

This year’s event will take place on Sunday, September 24, 2017, and over 150 theaters are currently on deck to offer up special film programs in what is billed as a “nationwide celebration of the cultural and community growth that art house theaters promote.”

Read More7 Filmmakers Turning Amazon Into An Art House Cinema Powerhouse

Per its mission, “Art House Theater Day celebrates the legacy of independent theaters as advocates for cinematic arts. In an age where media has become more digital than tangible,...

"Plunge into the intrinsic range of unfamiliar expressions, inside this wild sanctuary that offers a sonorious glimpse into the reveries, melodies, and rhapsodies of a great donkey orchestra." What will undoubtedly be the strangest film I catch at the 2017 edition of Hot Docs, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's document of empathy on the most maligned of beasts, the humble Donkey, plays out like a fly-on-the-tail Frederick Wiseman film, Do Donkey's Act? is kind of an inversion of Titicut Follies through the needles-eye of Au Hasard Balthazar, only ponderously plush with purple prose, narrated with picnic panache by none other than Willem Dafoe.  It takes about 10 minutes or so to get into the rhythm of the film, but once you hang-five on the vibe...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWSMichael Ballhaus (second from right) on the set of Martin Scorsese's The DepartedMichael Ballhaus, the great German cinematographer whose innovative work connects Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Martin Scorsese, has died at the age of 81.Goodness, could it be true, The Lost City of Z director James Gray and Brad Pitt finally teaming up? And for a sci-fi? Indeed: the film, titled Ad Astra, will be shooting this summer.Recommended VIEWINGKathryn Bigelow has been attached to several projects following the success and controversy of Zero Dark Thirty, and now we have a first look at her next feature, Detroit, set during 1967 riots in the city. It will be in cinemas this summer.The teaser trailer for Joachim Trier's Thelma, possibly headed to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. We spoke to Trier about his English language debut, Louder Than Bombs,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented special Oscars to some of Hollywood’s veteran industry leaders Nov. 12 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center. For the eighth year running, the Governors Awards have served to complement the Oscars ceremony, honoring “extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.” This year’s honorees, big-screen legend Jackie Chan, documentarian Frederick Wiseman (“Titicut Follies”), editor Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia”), and casting director Lynn Stalmaster, were recognized as “true pioneers and legends in their crafts,” as Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement. Each has blazed trails in their respective fields, making them ideal recipients of such a distinctive prize. Nowhere is this more true than for Stalmaster, who has made history as the first casting director to be formally recognized by the Academy.

In its own way, the Governors Awards is the most important film event of the year. On the surface, it’s the Academy Awards rendered in miniature as the Academy Board of Governors presents honorary Oscars to veteran film artists. But in reality, this is the Oscar starting gun wrapped in tuxedos and Louboutins: There’s never greater proximity to Academy voters.

Launched in 2009 to present career awards while not extending the already-long Oscarcast, the Governors Awards are meant to evoke the more-intimate feel of early Academy Award ceremonies. However, Oscar consultants quickly saw the event as an odyssey in its own right, since it provides an opportunity for intimate, grade-a campaigning just at the start of Phase 1 — the period that defines the Oscar season up until nominations are announced.

It’s a moment that won’t be matched for the rest of the season, but it also makes for...

In its own way, the Governors Awards is the most important film event of the year. On the surface, it’s the Academy Awards rendered in miniature as the Academy Board of Governors presents honorary Oscars to veteran film artists. But in reality, this is the Oscar starting gun wrapped in tuxedos and Louboutins: There’s never greater proximity to Academy voters.

Launched in 2009 to present career awards while not extending the already-long Oscarcast, the Governors Awards are meant to evoke the more-intimate feel of early Academy Award ceremonies. However, Oscar consultants quickly saw the event as an odyssey in its own right, since it provides an opportunity for intimate, grade-a campaigning just at the start of Phase 1 — the period that defines the Oscar season up until nominations are announced.

It’s a moment that won’t be matched for the rest of the season, but it also makes for...

"Cinema Verité strikes me as just a pompous French term...I make movies. That suits me better."

Frederick Wiseman was at the forefront of the renaissance of American documentary film, working during the 1960s at a time when Albert and David Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, and Richard Leacock were astounding the world with the immediacy of Direct Cinema.  The decade reinvented the documentary, with its seemingly unmediated observation of lives and places that never seemed to merit consideration before.  Wiseman took his camera and showed us things that shocked us, and, in some cases, changed official policy.  His first film, Titicut Follies, went inside the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and looked without hesitation, without comment, at the brutal and humiliating treatment of the patients,  culminating in the inmate talent show that gave the film its name.  The movie was banned.

Wiseman has a long history with the  London Film Festival,...

After decades of death-defying stunts, broken bones and a ton of classic movies, martial arts legend Jackie Chan is finally getting an Oscar. Chan, along with several others, will be presented with an honorary Oscar at the Academy's 8th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 12. After more than 50 years in the business, Chan has very well earned this honor.

The Academy announced on Thursday that the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had voted to bestow the honor to Chan, who's first acting credit dates all the way back to 1962. The actor got his first major break in the action/comedy Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in 1978, and the martial arts world has never quite been the same since. Here's what Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs had to say about it in a statement.

"The Honorary Award was created for artists like Jackie Chan,...

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night (August 30) to present Honorary Awards to actor Jackie Chan, film editor Anne V. Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The four Oscar statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s 8th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 12, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center.

“The Honorary Award was created for artists like Jackie Chan, Anne Coates, Lynn Stalmaster and Frederick Wiseman – true pioneers and legends in their crafts,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “The Board is proud to honor their extraordinary achievements, and we look forward to celebrating with them at the Governors Awards in November.”

After making his motion picture debut at the age of eight, Chan brought his childhood training with the Peking Opera to a distinctive international career. He starred in – and sometimes wrote,...

The Board of Governors from AMPAS have finally announced their selections for this year's Honorary Oscars. This year they're not giving out the Thalberg (for Producing) or the Hersholt (for Huminatarian efforts) but just the regular ol' Honorary Oscars. If such a thing can be deemed "regular" since they're so hard to come by. Consider that James Ivory still doesn't have one despite being a masterful oft imitated but never duplicated director behind three major Best Picture contenders (and many other beautiful films) and never having won an an Oscar and being 88 years old. Nathaniel wept. Oscar remains remarkably stingy with the gays but at least they've noticed the need for diversity in other ways.

Congratulations to this year's esteemed recipients! 

Jackie Chan's starmaking hit The Legend of Drunken Master (1978)

Superstar Jackie Chan

He's a famous actor, producer, and director and his filmography is just enormous with well over 100 films under his belt.

Every year, industry folks lobby the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with their candidates for honorary Oscar winners at the annual Governors Awards. And sometimes they get their way. Over the years Mike Kaplan, a publicists branch Academy member, has successfully lobbied for Lillian Gish, Robert Altman and John Ford’s favorite actress Maureen O’Hara, who happily collected her gold man the year before she died.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Board of Governors voted Tuesday night on the 2016 (un-televised) Governors Awards, which often including the coveted producer’s award, the Thalberg, and the Hersholt humanitarian award. You know what they’re looking for: someone who is still respected — if not revered. Francis Ford Coppola, John Calley and Dino DeLaurentiis have collected the Thalberg in recent years; Harry Belafonte, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie have accepted the Hersholt.

Every year, industry folks lobby the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with their candidates for honorary Oscar winners at the annual Governors Awards. And sometimes they get their way. Over the years Mike Kaplan, a publicists branch Academy member, has successfully lobbied for Lillian Gish, Robert Altman and John Ford’s favorite actress Maureen O’Hara, who happily collected her gold man the year before she died.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Board of Governors voted Tuesday night on the 2016 (un-televised) Governors Awards, which often including the coveted producer’s award, the Thalberg, and the Hersholt humanitarian award. You know what they’re looking for: someone who is still respected — if not revered. Francis Ford Coppola, John Calley and Dino DeLaurentiis have collected the Thalberg in recent years; Harry Belafonte, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie have accepted the Hersholt.