Frederick Wiseman
Directing
Biography
Frederick Wiseman (January 1, 1930 — February 16, 2026) was an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theatre director. As a documentarian, Wiseman has been noted for his ability to capture the nuances of life in American institutions such as prisons, hospitals, welfare offices, and high schools. He started out in 1963 by producing a narrative feature, The Cool World, an examination of the lives of Harlem teenagers. In the beginning, Wiseman was a staunch social reformist, and his films were calls for change. Titicut Follies, his first documentary, is an exposé of life in a prison for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, MA. It was controversial and left Wiseman with the reputation of being a muckraker. His four subsequent documentaries were all exposés of other tax-supported institutions designed to show the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy that not only threatens to destroy them, but also dehumanizes the people they were meant to serve. Wiseman toned down his message and began focusing more on American culture to point out the symbolism of daily activities in his film Primate (1974). In the 1980s, he began examining institutions as they relate to ideology. Unlike other documentaries, Wiseman’s work does not progress chronologically; rather, the segments are arranged thematically, like an essay, and are linked via rhetorical devices such as comparison and contrast to create a patterned structure. His films are never narrated, thereby forcing viewers to make connections between the sequences themselves. Wiseman has occasionally returned to fictional films, albeit in a non-fiction performance style, as with Seraphita’s Diary (1982) and La Derniere Lettre (2002).
Known For
When aimless Manon begins work at À mon seul désir, a strip club that offers high concept performances, she instantly bonds with her fellow strippers, particularly Mia, an aspiring actress with a boyfriend and child. Manon learns that it is “not easy money, but fast money” and when she finds herself falling for Mia, she is forced to question her priorities as she explores her newfound erotic life.
My Sole Desire
The renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
A Private Life
An aspiring author looking to get more out of life takes up a writing residency and finds herself in the sort of romantic entanglements that could come from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Explore the evolution of a couple involved in industrial espionage.
Thanksgiving
CENTRAL PARK is a film about the famous New York City landmark and the variety of ways in which people make use of it: running, boating, walking, skating, music, theatre, sports, picnics, parades and concerts. The film also illustrates the complex problems the New York City Parks Department deals with in order to maintain and preserve the park and keep it open and accessible to the public.
Central Park
Rachel loves her life, her students, her friends, her ex, her guitar lessons. When she falls in love with Ali, she grows close to his 4-year-old daughter, Leila. She tucks her in, looks after her, and loves her like a mother... which she isn’t. Not yet. Rachel is 40. The desire for a family of her own is growing stronger, and the clock is ticking. Is it too late?
Other People's Children
A stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers, and psychiatrists.
Titicut Follies
One camera in one setting, one attic and eight young directors – the result is a unique Dadaistic collage of seven short sketches. The original task for each filmmaker was to keep each short under three minutes, to set it in one hotel room, and to include the sentence “I miss Sonja Henie." This experimental film was shot over a single night at the international film festival FEST in Beograd in 1971.
I Miss Sonia Henie
As an imminent construction project looms over their beloved small-town baseball field, a pair of New England rec-league teams face off for the last time. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.
Eephus
A large and beautiful property on the French Riviera. A place that seems out of time and sheltered from the rest of the world. Anna goes there with her daughter for a few days of vacation. Amidst her family, friends and the house staff, Anna has to handle her fresh break-up with her partner and the writing of her next film.
The Summer House
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
MODEL shows male and female models at work on TV commercials, fashion shows, magazine covers, and advertising for a variety of products, including designer collections, fur coats, sports clothes and automobiles. The models are seen at work with photographers whose techniques illustrate different styles of fashion and product photography. The business aspect of running an agency is also shown: interviewing prospective models, career counseling, arranging portfolios, talking with clients, and planning trips. The film presents a view of the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television and fantasy.
Model
A cinéma vérité look inside Paris' Crazy Horse, a club that boasts the greatest and most chic nude dancing in the world.
Crazy Horse
A film by Frederick Wiseman following the ins and outs of 7 ballets by the Paris Opera Ballet.
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
National Gallery
WELFARE shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life.
Welfare
A former mining town in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Aspen is now better known as a winter playground for wealthy holidaymakers. Against the majestic landscape, visitors relax while locals toil around them.
Aspen
Founded in 1930, Troisgros has held three Michelin stars for 55 years. The children of the fourth generation, Marie-Pierre and Michel's sons are continuing the family business: César runs the Michelin-starred restaurant, "Le Bois sans feuilles" ("The Leafless Wood"), and Léo is in charge of one of the other two Troisgros restaurants, "La Colline du colombier" ("The Dovecote Hill"). From the daily market to the cheese maturing cellars, via the vineyard, the cattle farm and the vegetable garden adjacent to the restaurant, Menus-Plaisirs is an intimate, sensory journey through the kitchens of one of the world's most prestigious restaurants.
Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros
18 years after his last film, (The Troubles We've Seen), Marcel Ophuls emerges from retirement as one of our last masters, the most corrosive, the funniest as well. And the most forceful. The director of The Sorrow and the Pity shares with us stories of his exceptionally rich life in this light-hearted yet bitter escapade though the century and the movies. Son of the great Max Ophuls, he is generous in his admiration. We also meet Jeanne Moreau, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and of course François Truffaut. There are no great filmmakers without a memory, so here is the memory shop of Marcel Ophuls.
Ain't Misbehavin
MEAT traces the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods. It depicts the processing and transportation of meat products by a highly automated packing plant, illustrating important points and problems in the area of production, transportation, logistics, equipment design, time-motion study, and labor management.