![Frederick Wiseman [Photo: Erik Madigan Heck]](https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/files/2017/04/Frederick-Wiseman-1b20ljq-1024x683.jpg)
I recently had the opportunity of seeing Frederick Wiseman’s 1968 documentary High School for a second time, as part of IU Cinema’s ongoing Filmmaker to Filmmaker series. The last time I saw the film, over ten years ago, I was myself a student in a public high school. Indignation marked my first experience of the film–a frustration that connected with my own dissatisfaction with a public school system that, from my vantage point, appeared more interested in generating social conformity than in creating willfully curious and critical individuals. And while that critique felt just as present, and my cynicism for public education perhaps no less engaged, I found myself more interested, upon a second viewing, in Wiseman’s attention to detail in his subjects and the sense of ambiguity that arose in this attention.
There was a close-up of a hand, and another, and then many more. Maybe the hand, belonging to an administrator, wore a class ring. Maybe the hand, possessed by a female student engrossed in class discussion, wore a decorative ring, in the shape of a flower. There was a pull-focus from one disinterested student’s face in profile, to another student’s face, focused and intense. A teenager leans against a wall of lockers. Her arms are crossed. She waits silently for the bell. The camera searches for difficult images of beauty and finds symbols of thematic importance.
I no longer felt the need to confine the film’s meaning to my own political interpretation, or even Wiseman’s, which is, perhaps characteristically, biting and sardonic. The film was so essentially cinematic, I felt satisfied to not interpret it at all, but instead to drink it in and savor it. It was a relief to know a film so often characterized as an important social document, was also a sensuous artifact of the past, one that could be handed on not only as an instructional device, but as a beautiful and an ambiguous thing, something that captured the complexities of human beings (each small, particular moment and interaction), and their institutions (these big generalized relationships).
Frederick Wiseman is an astute observer of institutions. In his career of over forty documentary films, Wiseman has looked primarily at American institutions and has done so with a steadfast methodological and stylistic rigor. Wiseman’s documentary films have no interviews, no narration, no archival footage or photographs, no auxiliary graphics or information of any sort. They are extemporaneous artifacts of a documentary process and his commitment to this process is unlike anything else in non-fiction filmmaking. In this way, Wiseman’s work transcends the conventional trappings of documentary filmmaking and asserts itself as fundamentally cinematic; you cannot paraphrase a Wiseman film, it must be seen.
I spoke with Wiseman on Tuesday, March 28 around 11:30 a.m. We discussed the adaptation of his first film into a ballet, his relationship to mainstream non-fiction filmmaking, his 2015 film In Jackson Heights, his soon to be released film Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, and whether or not his films have become more hopeful in recent years.
NATHANIEL SEXTON: So, you’re in Minneapolis now. Are you preparing for the opening of your new ballet based on your first film Titicut Follies?
FREDERICK WISEMAN: That’s right.
NS: How did this opportunity first come to you?
FW: Well, I’ve made four dance movies and I have always been very interested in ballet and I go to ballets a lot. A lot of the ballets I saw, they were either fairytales, you know life long ago, or about princesses put to sleep by evil witches and that sort of thing. I rarely saw ballets that dealt with contemporary life. So, I thought it would be interesting if I could find a choreographer who would make a ballet based on one of my films and I thought the film that is most appropriate is Titicut Follies… to see whether that would be possible to transform the gestures of psychotic people, many of whom were criminally insane… to turn their experience and their movements into classical ballet. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who had just started a center for ballet and the arts at NYU and she gave me a fellowship in the Fall of 2014. Her name is Jennifer Homans. She wrote a really definitive history of ballet called Apollo’s Angels. She gave me a fellowship from the center and she has a wide acquaintance among dance choreographers and so she suggested a number of choreographers. I looked at their work and I liked what I saw of James Sewell, who had his own ballet company in Minneapolis. I called him up and he was interested. I sent him the film and he thought it was a good idea and that he would give it a whirl. So, he is the choreographer and his company is dancing the ballet.
NS: It’s kind of an unusual starting place for a ballet, but it does make sense. Ballet has dealt with difficult themes, especially mental illness. But, when I first saw Titicut Follies I was in high school and it left a pretty strong impression on me in terms of coming to see institutions as very powerful and then coming to have a more compassionate relationship to people who were experiencing things very different and apart from myself. And, I wonder how ballet can translate that kind of audience impact or if that even figures into the project?
FW: Yeah, that figures into it. The ballet is not literal. Maybe thirteen or fourteen scenes from the film form the basis of the ballet, but it’s not a literal reconstruction. We’re trying to deal with the ideas of the film and to see whether they can be transformed into a ballet.
NS: So, that makes me think about the particularities of form. You are a documentary filmmaker primarily. You have over forty films you have made over the course of fifty years. For me, seeing one of your films is a sort of relief, especially today, where I think there are an incredible number of documentary titles but they all kind of do the same thing… which is this inheritance of a television, conventional format… you have a talking head, you have a narration and a persuasive stance. Do you see that as something separate entirely from the kind of work you’re doing or what is your relationship with what most people think of as “documentary” in mainstream film culture?
FW: I have no relationship to it. I rarely ever watch any movie; I don’t have time. I don’t like the way I make movies because it’s the only way to make movies, it’s just the way I like to make them. There have been some great movies based on interviews, particularly the work of Marcel Ophüls, but it’s just a style that doesn’t interest me. It’s a perfectly valid style, but it’s not mine.
NS: It doesn’t seem to take full advantage of the form of cinema, right? It’s not based in an affinity for an image or…
FW: Yeah. In my view, it’s much less cinematic because as you say it doesn’t take advantage of the form. Not all my stuff is action stuff, although many of them are. In any case, there is always a lot of movement.
NS: One of the things that makes me very happy about your films, is that I don’t think there could be or should be a hardcover book companion to any of them. You know, you read the book and you watch the film or you just do the one but it’s the same experience.
FW: In some European countries they asked me to write a book for the film and I said, “No.” The film is self-explanatory and I don’t want… you don’t need to read through a book to explain it.
NS: You are busy preparing for the opening of this ballet, but you’re also editing your new film Ex Libris: New York Public Library?
FW: Well, it’s finished. I finished it in December. It’s opening in New York on September 13th and it’s going to Paris in the Fall. I am waiting to hear whether one of the major film festivals will show it.
NS: How long did it take to film and how long did it take to edit?
FW: It took eleven weeks to shoot and about ten months to edit.
NS: Was it the kind of usual set up? You were doing sound, and you had John Davey operating the camera, and you had a third person with you to help move things?
FW: That’s right. Exactly.
NS: Just last night I watched In Jackson Heights to kind of catch up a little bit. As I understand it, this was the end of a kind of trilogy including Aspen and Belfast, Maine?
FW: Right. It could be grouped with those films and also they’re different. Belfast, Maine has a population of about only 6,500 people. In Jackson Heights there are 150,000 people. So it’s not a small town, but I mean they were all films about communities.
NS: These three films, but maybe especially In Jackson Heights, might of disrupted your typical methodology a little bit. In the sense that, since you focus usually on a singular institution, you can go to the place and the experience of that place is somewhat contained within its walls but when you’re dealing with Jackson Heights you’re dealing with a neighborhood that has countless institutions within it…
FW: Right.
NS: So the film kind of feels like walking through a neighborhood. You have these really wonderful sequences that connect scenes, you even have a motif of street signs. It really feels like walking through the neighborhood. Does this in part reproduce the production experience?
FW: Well, yeah, it was like that. As you know I don’t prepare a lot and I shoot what I come across. Some places, most places I didn’t need to get permission. So it’s just showing up and shooting. But, I mean, you’re right. I used street signs to give a sense of where in the neighborhood you are, where we are. Also, it was one of many ways to give the sense of how big the neighborhood is.
NS: How did you come across that women’s knitting group in the cafe?
FW: Oh, because someone told me that every Wednesday morning there was a group of women who knitted together. So, I just showed up, that was Wednesday morning, and there they were.
NS: Did you have a group of ambassadors to the neighborhood that helped you orient yourself?
FW: Yeah, because it was too big. I have a friend who lives in the neighborhood who teaches at the City College and he gave me a list of all the community organizations and the names of the people that ran them and their phone numbers. So, before I started I called them all up to introduce myself. Actually, I did it from France. I told them what I wanted to do and said I would come around and say “Hello” when I got there, which is what I did. There were two or three people who were particularly helpful. There was one man who was one of the leaders of the East Asian community, specifically the Bangladeshi community, who introduced me around that community. There was another man in the Jewish community who knew absolutely everybody. There was a community center that was leased for meetings. The guy that ran that community center was one of my principles, you say “ambassadors.” That was where a lot of meetings of the Hispanic community took place. It was on the original list and I just went over there. I found out that Monday through Friday, every week, there was a meeting on a different subject between six and seven. That became a very good place to hang out from six to seven. That’s how I got the talk with the woman who describes her daughter’s trip over the border. One of the groups that met there was the gay and lesbian organization and that’s how I got that sequence. And there were a couple other. The sequence toward the end of the film where the two men describe how they have been taken advantage of in their jobs… It’s just a question of being lucky enough to be there when those things were going on.
NS: I mean the movie is timely, it was completed in 2015, but maybe it’s especially timely now in 2017 when the United States is changing.
FW: You know, I had no idea Trump was going to be elected. Immigration has always been a big issue, but that’s not why I made the film. But, it turns out the film deals with that issue.
NS: It was sometimes very sad. After I finished the film, I looked up the Business Improvement District. It was referred to as the “BID” in the film. It’s this measure responsible for gentrification throughout New York City and some super wealthy group was targeting Jackson Heights during the filming. It plays a major role in the film but there is no resolution. I was afraid to discover what might have happened but there was some solace. I discovered that the community successfully defeated this measure.
FW: I just found that out too. Right.
NS: And, a lot has been said, and I know that you have on a whole rejected it, about how your most recent work tends toward optimism, a hopefulness for institutions. I know you have said that the particular subjects, rather than a changing perspective, bring out this hopefulness, but has it been a relief to you to maybe select subjects, like the New York Public Library, that can stand as a kind of symbol of hopefulness or some good?
FW: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I don’t reject the notion of hopefulness. The final film is in a sense a report of what I find. The New York Public Library is a great place. All libraries… certainly the New York Public Library, is a great example. It is probably the principal example of what’s really involved in an institution being democratic because everyone can use it, as long as they are not disorderly. All classes are involved in it: the board consisted of some of the richest people in the world, if not certainly in the country, and at the same time homeless people are welcome to use it, and everybody in between. They run after school programs… I’m telling you what the film is about now. But, when the movie comes out, I hope people will see it as an institution that’s doing a superb job, not just in making books available, but providing educational programs, language programs, book discussions, bringing ideas to people, telling people how to set up corporations. I mean, they have a vast reach in the New York community.
NS: Since maybe Essene, your film from 1972 about a Benedictine monastery… maybe there has not been a quieter subject since then, until looking at a library?
FW: It’s not so quiet. I mean, it’s certainly not intellectually quiet. There is a vast range of subjects illustrated in the film. I mean, there’s no scene, like there is in In Jackson Heights, of killing a chicken. But, there’s a lot of very different kinds of discussions of different and I think interesting subjects.
NS: Can that kind of quiet generate a different kind of style or rhythm to the film?
FW: I have to find the style that I think is appropriate to each film. Some films are very based on talk. At Berkeley is based on talk because it’s about what goes in the classroom and what goes on in academic administration. And, as you may have noticed, professors like to talk so there is a lot of talk in the movie. Boxing Gym is an action movie. There is a little talk but the story is primarily told through movement. Basic Training or the dance movies are the same way. In my view, the style of film is determined by my response to the subject matter.
NS: I wanted to ask briefly about your cinematographer John Davey. He’s worked on most of your films since he started with Blind in 1987. How did that relationship develop?
FW: I’ve used a camerman by the name of Bill Brayne who died recently. I used him for twelve or thirteen films. Bill stopped shooting and he recommended and introduced me to John.
NS: How do you work with your camera operator?
FW: I select what’s going to be shot. I lead with the mike. We look at rushes together every night and discuss what’s been shot, the way it’s been shot, and how we might shoot similar situations when they come up. It’s a very close working relationship.
NS: Have you ever been to Indiana before?
FW: No.
NS: Well, I am looking forward to your visit. Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
FW: Thanks for doing the interview.
Frederick Wiseman is scheduled to be at IU Cinema Tuesday April 4, 2017 at 7:00 p.m. for a 50th anniversary screening of Titicut Follies, and on April 5, 2017 for a 3:00 p.m. screening of Boxing Gym followed by Filmmaker to Filmmaker Conversation: Frederick Wiseman and Robert Greene at 7:00 p.m. At 9:30 p.m. Robert Greene is scheduled to be present for a screening of his documentary Kate Plays Christine. On May 1, 2017 the series concludes with a screening of Wiseman’s La Danse.
This annual Filmmaker to Filmmaker: Conversations from the Director’s Chair program pairs two complementary film directors on stage together, discussing their artistic vision, process, and bodies of work, surrounded by screenings of their films. The program is endowed through a generous gift from Roberta and Jim Sherman, with an Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign match. Additional support for the visit comes from IU Libraries Moving Image Archive, The Media School, Center for Documentary Research and Practice, Cinema and Media Studies, and Indiana University Libraries.
Nathaniel Sexton enjoys the films of Andrzej Zulawski, Alex Ross Perry, and Ingmar Bergman. He reads comic books, plays pinball, prefers his movies sad or slow, and volunteers at a video rental store. He likes to travel west by car but always misses movies when living out of a tent.