Happy 90th Birthday, Frederick Wiseman! Born today in 1930, this American theatre director, documentarian, editor, producer and director's work is "devoted primarily to exploring American institutions".
Wiseman was born to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Gertrude Leah (née Kotzen) and Jacob Leo Wiseman.
Years later, Wiseman earned a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College in 1951, and a Bachelor of Law from Yale Law School in 1954. He spent 1954 to 1956 serving in the U.S. Army after being drafted.
Wisemean spent the following two years in Paris, France before returning to the United States, where he took a job teaching law at the Boston University Institute of Law and Medicine.
He then started documentary filmmaking, and has since won numerous film awards as well as Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.
Among his credits, Wiseman is best known for directing the 1968 American black and white cinéma vérité/documentary film 'High School'.
The film shows a typical day for a group of students at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
'High School' was one of the first direct cinema documentaries, and was shot over five weeks in March and April 1968. It has aired on PBS, as well as all of his other films being that the network is one of his primary funders.
The first feature-length film that Wiseman produced was American filmmaker Shirley Clarke's 1963 American black and white documentary/crime film 'The Cool World'.
Seven years later, Wiseman founded Zipporah Films, Inc., which continues to distribute his documentaries. He had named the industry after his wife, Zipporah Batshaw, of whom Wiseman married in 1955.
Wiseman films are often described as in the observational mode, which has its roots in direct cinema, but 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 cinéma vérité is just a pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I'm concerned."
In 1991, 'High School' was selected for preservation in the National Film registry.
Three years later, Wisemen directed the 1994 American documentary film 'High School II'. This time, the film was shot in color and in New York City, New York. It has a runtime of almost four hours.
Among his credits, Wiseman is also known for the 1967 American Direct Cinema black and white historical/documentary film 'Titicut Follies' and the four-hour 2013 American epic documentary film 'At Berkeley'.
In 2017, Tne New York Times called him "one of the most important and original filmmakers working today".
Wiseman has been known to call his films "Reality Fictions". He has been called "one of the most important and original filmmakers working today".
Wiseman has been active from 1963–present.
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