Frederick Wiseman’s 42nd documentary brings his incisive vision to of one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning, capturing the vast programmatic scope of New York City’s library system. The NYPL is blessed with rich collections, uniformly passionate staff, and deeply devoted, appreciative bibliophiles and beneficiaries across its 92 branches. Wiseman reveals a venerable place of welcome, cultural exchange, and intellectual creativity as it works to sustain its traditional activities while adapting to the digital revolution.
Appears in: Weekend Engagements
Genres: Documentary
Other Films by Frederick Wiseman
Monrovia, Indiana
Master documentarian of institutions Frederick Weisman’s 43rd film is a vital, painstaking look into the daily lives and rituals of the townsfolk of Monrovia, Indiana, by-and-large a farming community, during the lead-up to the 2016 election. The town, barely 1,000 inhabitants strong, is like many in the Midwest: weddings, funerals, social gatherings, church, and the …
At Berkeley
“From 1967 to the present, Frederick Wiseman has built one of the most formidable bodies of work in cinema. His masterfully constructed documentaries (Wiseman has a sense of structure and of character to rival that of any fiction filmmaker) have examined the inner workings of institutions, undertakings, and ways of life great (WELFARE) and small …
The Store
In this fly-on-the-wall examination of the surrealism of the everyday, Wiseman points his camera at the flagship luxury department store Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas, during the 1982 holiday season and the height of fame of landmark TV series Dallas. Wiseman, granted unprecedented access to the store’s day-to-day operations, from sales meetings to showrooms, shows us …
Meat
After spending much of the 1960s and early 1970s examining the complexity of official institutions of American life—the school, the court, the military, bureaucracy—Wiseman here turns his lens toward the food industry, specifically the production of beef and lamb. At times grisly but wholly incisive, MEAT is more than a precursor to politically aware documentary …
Titicut Folllies
“Frederick Wiseman burst onto the scene in 1967 with what remains his most controversial film, a detached yet rigorous examination of the conditions at a mental health facility. Set in Massachusetts’ Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, the film peers relentlessly at the routine humiliations enacted by the guards upon the inmates, which range …