I got the job of the American filmmaker Frederick Wiseman by locking the pot. I used to work for the film section of Time Out London magazine, and my job involved writing capsule reviews for record screenings and festivals across the capital. Often, our team was sent a Jiffy Bag full of DVD-Rs with mysterious titles affixed to a marker pen. In 2006while preparing for the upcoming London Film Festival, we received a bunch of preview discs covering sidebar titles that we managed to put together in advance, and they were given to me and my colleagues at random. I was given a small plastic bag, tied with two rubber bands, and inside were two labeled DVD-Rs. .“State Legislature” written in big black letters. (The reason I remember these details so clearly is that I never got the discs back – sorry!). This was my perfect film encounter with the manager.
Watching the film was something of a baptism of fire, because all the official guidelines of documentary cinema were removed with the expectation that the viewer would use less energy to keep up with its unique length. There was no narration, no scripts, no music, no quick cuts – nothing more than necessary. Much of Wiseman’s work involved looking at pockets of human activity and interaction through the facility’s foundation or workplace, and entering blindly. 217 a minute State Legislature it was like the experience of being a gawky newbie starting a new job and having to feel yourself entering this unfamiliar place. However, as soon as Wiseman humbled himself MO it becomes clear, his whole world (and worldview) suddenly opens up. He rarely deviated from the filmmaking process he described as .“a fictional tale”.
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But surely that is a contradiction? How can subjectivity and objectivity coexist in the same framework? Wiseman made films where he would struggle to achieve something that was not quite right, in that he would make himself and his camera poor and he would not be able to manipulate or frame the action in front of him. Yet humility comes from acknowledging that the mere presence of a camera or someone holding a boom microphone will naturally change the subject’s behavior, even to a degree that may not be apparent to the viewer. Also, every editing or modification of our perspective gives signs and controls the way we see time, which is inherent in every film. Being allowed to peek into meetings and sessions of the Idaho State Legislature is a way to access the invisible world. By the time of this film, in what would eventually be a six-decade career, Wiseman had developed his visual style to a high artistic level.
My Wiseman journey continued soon after with the help of The BFI Southbank’s DVD and a Blu-ray store where, in the previous incarnation, we could sell titles from US and overseas. As such, it included DVDs of Wiseman’s entire corpus (at a high price but not extortionate considering the fact that most films come out on multiple discs), and I created a small Wiseman slush bag so we could pick up one new film a month. I started at the beginning with his first non-fiction book, 1968‘s Titicut Folliesabout life in a men’s asylum in Massachusetts, which remains one of his most acclaimed and best-known films. A standout subject of the revelations it offers about the mistreatment of prisoners, it’s also one of Wiseman’s most subtle political films – almost acting as a journalistic activist piece. Indeed, it was so successful in presenting the brutality of this institution that it was closed for many years until a lawsuit was filed against the fact that its subjects were not reasonable enough to give their consent to be photographed, despite the fact that Wiseman had obtained permission from the prison warden in advance.
My personal Wiseman journey spanned many years, and I got a huge kick out of being able to immerse myself in these little worlds for a few hours. His films were always different and always the same – using a range of structures and contexts to present human intimacy, human communication and human tension in all their colorful and abstract beauty (and text!).
At the time of his death at an advanced age 96it must be said that Wiseman was the rare filmmaker who never made a bad film and, in fact, made some great ones during his eight and nine years (National Gallery, In Berkeley, Ex Libris: New York Public Library). My favorite are his movies 1997‘s Public Housing offering an audio survey of the Ida B Wells housing development in Chicago, documenting the realities of life near the poverty line, but creating something symphonic about its images and editing. Although we are allowed access to the meetings of the residents and the working of various municipal offices, the film also focuses on the configuration and repetition of the life of the estate, everything is always different but somehow always the same. Just thinking about it makes me overcome with melancholy.
It’s always sad when one of the true masters dies, but Wiseman leaves behind one of the most impressive, expansive and rich works of any artist in modern times. Here he hopes that the closure of his project will lead many others to begin their journey through his worlds.
